A Vital Tonic

There was a hush of anticipation.

Then a game and smiling George Wallace was lifted onto the Miami convention platform in his wheelchair. His presence was more miraculous than almost anyone in the hall realized. The real wonder--even to his doctors--was that Wallace was alive.

When the Governor was carried into the Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., last May, the doctors' immediate concern was a bullet lodged somewhere in Wallace's abdomen. To probe for that bullet, the surgeons made a vertical incision, beginning just below Wallace's rib cage and extending along his right side. What they found was an Augean mess. Before the missile came to rest in the muscles of Wallace's abdominal wall, it had blasted through his intestinal tract in several places, splashing undigested food into the abdominal cavity. To clean this out, the doctors lifted Wallace's intestines out of the body cavity and onto his chest. They spent the next five hours wiping off Wallace's internal organs, using suction to remove contaminating wastes, and sewing up the holes in his gut. To help take care of infection--an inevitable consequence of the outpouring of bacteria from his digestive tract--the doctors placed drains in his abdomen as well as in the surgical incision.

There was no urgency, they felt, about removing the other bullet lodged against Wallace's spine. It had already done its damage. Its concussive impact had bruised nerves and caused partial paralysis. But it was now wedged "harmlessly" against the spinal cord. It could be left there until his general condition improved.

Would Wallace ever walk again?

The question was asked urgently again and again. Hopes that he might got a ticklish boost from reports that one of the Governor's toes had wiggled in an involuntary reflex reaction when his son George touched it. Doctors said it was nothing to get excited about. They did not mention another hopeful rumor. The way the story went, Wallace had unexpectedly moaned when a nurse stuck a hypodermic needle in his buttock. Excitedly she told doctors that the semiparalyzed patient had sensation below his waist. Doctors attached little significance to such reflex-like responses, and image-conscious Wallaceites chose to tell only the bowdlerized tale of a wiggling toe.

But the major danger to the patient remained internal infection. Despite the surgeons' heroic cleanup of the intestinal spillage from the first bullet, some bacteria remained and caused abscesses. Nine days after the operation, pus began to ooze from the surgical incision, and doctors detected an abscess in the left flank. Under local anesthesia, they cut into and drained the infection. Even with massive doses of antibiotics, Wallace now had peritonitis (a potentially fatal inflammation of the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity). It was then that the Governor was very near death. To be effective, antibiotics must reach bacteria through the bloodstream. But because the abscessed tissue lacked an organized blood supply, the antibiotics could not conquer the infection. So the doctors irrigated the abscess with an antibacterial solution. This meant squirting it in and then sucking it out through the wound drain-sites, several times a day.

Finally the infection was under control. This was the moment the surgeons had been waiting for. Now they focused their attention on the other bullet. To reach it, they made a five-inch cut through muscle along the spine. They found the spinal cord somewhat bruised, but it was not severed. The bullet was lying free and thus it was easily removed. There is no truth to the rumor that the bullet had carried with it a piece of shirt, which might have caused yet another infection.

A few days later Wallace reported some feeling in his thighs. This was a direct benefit of the surgeons' repair work. The concussion from the second bullet had tangled some of the sinewy nerves, driving some on top of others like fallen telephone wires, thus short-circuiting the "power" to nerve endings below Wallace's waist. When the neurosurgeons painstakingly sorted these out and repositioned them, some sensation-signal pathways were partially restored --at least to the upper thighs.

Visitors who saw Wallace before his second operation were shocked by his drawn appearance. Last week convention goers and televiewers could see his progress. The trip to Miami may not have been just what the doctors ordered; but for George Wallace, being back in politics is a vital tonic.

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