Dolores at Fort Hood, Tijuana and Detroit

By John Jellinek

An unsung American heroine, Dolores a nurse in surgery is betrayed by her own kind: doctors!

Th e first one, a gynecologist, keeps her waiting for 3 months before he does a D & C, and by way of a biopsy, finds out she has cervical cancer. At first he is going to do a radical hysterectomy, changes his mind, and dumps her on a radiologist with a non-existent Stage IC diagnosis report. The radiologist, not knowing his Merck Manual too well, convinces her that radiology is as effective as a hysterectomy operation for any Stage I cervical cancer.

A year later, the cancer had metastasized. She receives chemotherapy and becomes very religious. The tumors disappear and she believes she is healed. However, three months later her health deteriorates, again.

The husband and Dolores meet a lady cured of lung cancer by a strict metabolic diet and Laetrile pills. This happens while he is on a 3 month tour of duty assignment at Fort Hood, Texas as a civilian engineer for the US Army Tank-Automotive Command. On her advice and a talk with the doctor in Mexico they take a chance to cure Dolores with a trip to Clinica Cydel in Tijuana. After a few days of Laetrile treatment, but inability to hold down food, Dolores collapses and she is hospitalized at Dr. Contreras Hospital del Mar.

She is put on a plane from San Diego to Detroit 3 weeks later, but rapidly breaks down in health. Her last day out, she attends a faithful Christian service conducted by evangelist Nora Lam. Dolores expires 4 months later.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450249300

John Jellinek

JOHN JELLINEK is a retired mechanical engineer. He began his scientific career at Emerson Research Laboratories and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratories in heat transfer, and expanded it at Bellcomm, Inc., to space rescue and lunar transportation vehicles. Since his retirement from engineering at the US Army-Tank Automotive Command, he has devoted himself writing and jewelry making.

Book preview

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgement

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

PART II

Chapter 4

PART III

Chapter 5

Epilogue I

Epilogue II

Dedication

Dedicated to my late wife, Dolores Louise Wessel: You were so right when you said,

"Whenever you meet another woman, you will think of me – your first wife.

You will never forget me." I pray to see you again in Heaven.

Acknowledgement

Thank you to Ms. Meredith Burns for help with editing and electronically formatting this true story.

PART I

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Hope

Chapter 1

PERMISSION

"One full minute of absolute silence. Just remain standing for one full minute. You are now in the presence of the Holy Spirit. ‘It’s not by might, it’s not by power, but it is by my Spirit,’ saith the Lord. Breathe upon our waiting hearts spirit of the living God. Come upon each person in divine presence… Thou are the Holy God. The great High Priest. The very son of the Living God. Wherever one finds the Holy Spirit one always finds him magnifying Jesus. John said in the Book of the Revelation,

‘…and I heard the Redeemed of all ages, of every kindred, all tribes, all nations, as they sang,

Hallelujah {choir}…, accepts our worship…

Hallelujah… accept our praise…

Hallelujah…we vow to give you all the glory

Hallelujah…there is coming a day when every head will bow…every knee will bend…

Hallelujah…

Hallelujah, Hallelujah…the very last row in the top balcony, sing it everywhere… Hallelujah

…Everybody…Hallelujah…Hallelujah, Hallelujah.’

Lifting up holy hands… Hallelujah, Hallelujah… the holy hands… Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah…"

The Kathryn Kuhlman Miracle Service here at Notre Dame University Convocation Center Arena is almost over. Jimmy McDonald is leading the singing of Hallelujah. All sixteen thousand of us join in with him. We are standing holding our hands up high to Jesus. All Sixteen thousand of us sick and our loved ones. We have come from a radius of 400 miles by charted buses. There are people from the Chicago area, from Minneapolis, from Detroit, from Indiana and from Ontario. We left the Detroit area in 5 charted Greyhound type buses at 6 in the morning. I had to see this for myself. Of course watching the miracle of the sick being healed was a very moving experience. Walking up to the stage with my wife, Dolores, made me curious as to whether she could be miraculously cured. I was praying for her when the medical doctor explained to Miss Kulhman and the audience what was wrong with her - Lymphatic Squamous Carcinoma. I was curious as to the prayer from Miss Kuhlman and the healing through the Holy Spirit that would result. As Miss Kuhlman reached for her during the prayer, Dolores fell backwards. Miss Kuhlman continued with her message. In Jesus’ name rid this woman of this dreaded disease… Then, just as she was reaching toward me, a 6ft 3, 230 pound martial arts buff, Dolores was up on her feet again. Miss Kuhlman reached for her instead and Dolores went down a second time. This time I helped the minister, whose job it was during the service to catch falling people, in lifting Dolores. Thus, my opportunity of being touched by Kathryn Kulhman and being overpowered by the Holy Spirit was lost forever. Later on in the service another young woman suffering from cancer went on the stage with her nurse. Miss Kuhlman extended both hands. One to the victim, the other to the nurse and they both fell down.

They came to the stage by the tens. Disabled of all kinds, auto accident victims, deaf and dumb, advanced Diabetics, Arthritics, etc … etc. The Testimonial of the auto accident woman, who had been healed at the Ann Arbor service two months earlier, was particularly vivid in detail as to sustained injuries, therapy, and results. She had come to the Ann Arbor service reluctantly only at the instigation of her daughter and because she lived nearby. In her mind she was a hopeless case - to live the rest of her live on pain pills. Now here she was in South Bend, Indiana telling this large audience how Kathryn Kuhlman had sought her out in the Ann Arbor Service and how the Holy Spirit, through Miss Kulhman, had cured her of all pains to the point where now she could do calisthenics! She demonstrated by touching her toes.

It was delightful to listen to Miss Kuhlman’s humor in dealing with Christians of various denominations. Her ease in talking to a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Lutheran or a Baptist was refreshing. Obviously she felt at home with all of them. However there were a few things that bothered me about what Miss Kulhman said. It was more by omission than commission - the silent prayer exclusively for all Christians that had suffered throughout the ages. I thought that in this period of the Bicentennial Celebration of our Nation, a silent prayer for the hundreds of thousands of American Indians that had been ravaged from their native land, beaten, maimed and murdered by us, Judeo - Christians would have been more appropriate. The same could also have been said for the Jews, Masons, Jehovah Witnesses, Poles, Russian prisoners, Catholic Priests, Gypsies, the senile and mentally ill that were killed by the Christian German nation of Adolf Hitler! My tailor friend, Ignacy Kunin, was there in the death camps. His life was spared by the Nazis because he made the finest clothing for top SS officers and their women. According to Ignacy the machine guns would cease firing for a half hour every Christmas Eve. And that was only thirty two years ago.

One other thing that occurred to me was what if Gary Taylor had not been caught in Texas a few months earlier, but had instead attended Kathryn Kuhlman’s service in Ann Arbor-near his home, would he have been absolved of all sin? That’s always been the most ticklish point in Christianity: No matter what the enormity of crime, he who gives himself to Christ is absolved of all sin. Does that mean that the innocent victim that may not have been a believer or was a Jew or Muslim goes to Hell and the assailant or criminal who now turns to Christ goes to Heaven?

The meeting winds up, the service is over. The audience is making for the Diesel buses. The stench of the Diesel fuel exhaust is overwhelming outside of the auditorium in the parking lot. It takes about one hour for our buses to make their way for the Detroit passengers. We leave the Notre Dame campus about 8:30 in the evening. Nevertheless, all of the people are happy and grateful for having been to the Kathryn Kulhman Miracle Service. There is not the slightest annoyance or misgiving about coming home late in the evening. We stop somewhere outside of South Bend, Indiana to have dinner and that takes up another hour. By this time, most of the people from Detroit, at least those from each individual bus, already know each other and are in a gay and talkative mood. Dolores is sitting in front next to Sandy. I am sitting in the back of the bus with Diana, and across from me are Sandy’s son, Mathew, and his grandfather. Mathew is a boy of about nine, who is a Type I diabetic – this is what brought Sandy, her husband, Neil, and their children, Mathew and Linda to devout Christianity. The boy and I have isle seats opposite each other. He is quite active. He and my daughter, Diana, are having running conversations and word games. Out of curiosity I wanted to test the boy’s reflexes. I was interested to know whether diabetes had other effects than the normally talked about effects such as thirstiness, and tiredness; so what I am doing is letting out with an open hand slap, stopping short of his face. I am watching his eyes to see if he is flinching. He is. Suddenly, he is throwing punches just short of my face. Apparently, his diabetes, which is controlled with insulin injections, has no effect on his reflex actions and coordination.

We make our way past Jackson and arrive in the Detroit area about 11:00 in the evening. By the time we get to the Eastland area, where we left our cars, it is about midnight. We are home at 1:00 hopeful and content that the sick, as in my case, my wife, Dolores, is on her way to a miraculous healing. This service, and others to which Dolores had gone alone, such as in St. Louis, and with Neil and Sandy to Pittsburgh was a necessity to lift her morale; to make her cope with her cancer which struck her at such an early age in life. In my mind I had been over the cause of her cancer and how it progressed a thousand times: all the missed opportunities, and all of the maltreatments that she had received. I had read a dozen books on the subject. Cancer wasn’t new to me; my father had it fifteen years earlier and died from it after 8 months of struggle. What was new to me was cancer in the feminine organ: that, I was not familiar with: its initiation, its symptoms, and its progression. What was important now was to gain a few months of recuperative time to adjust to the new life that she would have to lead.

During the summer months she had received the chemotherapy of Mitomycin, Bleomycin, and Oncovin. It had lousy side effects of vomiting, and loss of hair. We really had to get away. Especially because our daughter had conveyed the message to the neighbors’ kids that her mother had lost her hair and had cancer.

I was able to perceive a need to leave the Michigan area, the neighborhood in particular, for a while and volunteered for a liaison job at Fort Hood, Texas representing my employer here in Warren, Michigan. This job was of a three months temporary nature and was on a rotating basis. There are representatives from nine different Army Commodity Commands of which my employer, the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command, is but one. The assignment at Fort Hood is under the official organization name called Systems Longevity of Army Vehicles and Equipment. The acronym is SLAVE. I volunteered for the job back in July. The actual activity would commence on or about October 1. Since nobody else was interested for the fall quarter, I received permission to go.

A few days later I am called in with the coordinator of the SLAVE program at TACOM, Jim LaGrow, to COL Collins’ office. After the buildup from Jim, COL Collins congratulates me on being selected to represent TACOM this coming quarter. He gives me the pep talk of only being able to send his top engineers to Fort Hood. I chuckled - he hadn’t been told that no one else was interested in going. He instructs me to keep my eyes and ears open to all mechanical and engineering problems related to TACOM equipment at Fort Hood - this includes tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps and trucks. My job is to consist of reporting weekly by letter all materiel received, all persons contacted, all equipment examined, all field trips, and any other items of interest to TACOM. COL Collins also tells me to go out in the field and see how the soldiers handle our equipment and report their comments. We shake hands and Jim and I depart.

There was one more thing that had to be taken care of before leaving for Texas, and that was that Dolores, and in turn I, needed permission from her Oncologist, Doctor Petterson, to leave for Texas. The reason for this was that she was still under chemotherapy treatment. I called Doctor Petterson towards the middle of September and I talked the situation over with him. I explained to him that my assignment to Fort Hood had been accepted and that Dolores and I needed to get away. At first he was against the idea.

What if the tumor in her back gets larger while you’re down in Texas? She is going to blame you, he stated. So I asked what he would do for her in Detroit over the next three months that couldn’t be done in Texas. After all, Fort Hood has Darnell Army Hospital and thirty five miles away, in Temple, is Scott and White Memorial Hospital which is called the Mayo Clinic of the Southwest. So what difference would it really make if she was here or in Texas. The chemicals in the chemotherapy which he would prescribe are the same over here as in Texas. Dr. Petterson thought about it for awhile. He looked over Dolores’ record on chemotherapy. He concluded that she was through taking the Bleomycin and the Oncovin and that all that was really required was an administration of Mitomycin in the middle of October and another one in the middle of December. He told me that we should find an oncologist near Fort Hood as soon as we got down there. In order to receive full blessing from Petterson for our forthcoming trip, he scheduled her for a complete body scan to evaluate the exact status of the cancer.

Back in May, after the biopsy had been done on her lymph node on the right side of her neck, she had been given a complete body scan and brain scan, and her condition was as follows: She had positive cancer in the lymph nodes in the neck and a tumor in the back that was between the back of the abdomen and the spine. This tumor was about an inch and a half from the spine. She had also had a lesion in the right temple. However, this lesion was not positively identified as cancer. I believe Dr. Petterson had told me that for the brain lesion there are four tests-if two out of the four were positive he would recommend radiation therapy. In Dolores’ case only one out of the four tests, namely, the EEG test was ruled positive, and the other three negative. Consequently, it was not ruled cancer in the brain. What Petterson scheduled for this latter part of September was another Goullan scan to see what the condition of the tumor in her back was. A week later Dolores took the scan and two days later the results were in: NEGATIVE: There is no cancer in her back: The tumor that had been there a few months earlier had completely disappeared. The doctor that had administered the Goullan scan, it was not Petterson, could not believe the results. It was a medical oddity. Dolores was the happiest woman in the world when she received that news. In her mind she was convinced that she had received a religious healing.

She had gone to three or four Kathryn Kulhman services and was convinced that the Lord had rid her of cancer and that she had received a miraculous healing. She came home and told me the results. I was truly happy for her. But due to the nature of the false hopes that we had had the year before, when she had just about been guaranteed a full recovery from her cervical cancer by way of radiation therapy, I was not completely convinced that she was cured once and for all. She was angry that I didn’t fall on my knees and thank the Lord. Had I done so it would not have been in full sincerity. I had experienced too many disappointments in her case and also in my father’s case fifteen years earlier to be fully convinced that there is such a thing as a cure for cancer - religious or otherwise.

A few days later we went to Dr. Pettersons’ office. By this time he had received word from the doctor that had administered the Goullan scan on my wife and been told that the results were negative. Petterson too couldn’t believe that there had been a religious healing. Instead he felt that the tumor had disappeared due to the chemotherapy treatment which he had administered on Dolores over the past three and a half months.

A final reason for wishing to leave temporarily at this time was that I had received three moving violation tickets over a very short period of time, mid-July to the beginning of September. And each one of these tickets was the result of impatience and frustration rather than any driving skill or lack of skill. Impatience took hold during the period that Dolores was receiving her chemotherapy and the side effects she was having from it - mainly nausea, vomiting, loss of hair, and the admonition of Diana and the threats to Diana not to tell the neighbors’ kids what was wrong with her mother. It was a terrible price in emotions that we had to pay in interpersonal relationships with neighbors; that is, hiding the truth, and lying to babysitters as to what is wrong with Diana’s mother. So in the process I accumulated a total of eleven points over 2 years and in Michigan an accumulation of twelve points subjects one to a drivers’ license suspension. With my wife under chemotherapy the last thing I needed was a suspension of my driver’s license. I wanted to leave town for as long as possible so as to be close to April when a two year old violation would fall off the point’s roster and thus reduce my overall points to seven. Just like in real estate the most important thing in buying a house, as far as retaining value, is LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION; I felt that the best thing for my family, under the circumstances, to maintain optimism, instead of anxiety, was to get away for three months in a warm climate, with DISTRACTION, DISTRACTION and DISTRACTION.

Little does the motor vehicle bureau care that I had just pulled, one of the neatest tricks of all: On my 1970 Volvo I had a leak fixed in my left front tire. The boy in the gas station used an impact wrench to mount the wheel back on again. When I left the gas station I was going down Gratiot Avenue at 40 miles an hour when the wheel suddenly came off! The left front end smashed onto the road, lights were going on and off, sparks were flying and I was going down the street at 40 miles an hour on three wheels. I coasted the car in a perfectly straight line for about 400 feet without ever applying the brakes and finally turned into a parking lot of Montgomery Ward’s Regional Shopping Center. What had happened was that the kid in the gas station had stripped the thread off the studs when he applied the impact wrench to the nuts of the wheel.

He must have used a torque setting for pick-up trucks! Miraculously, no other vehicle was involved and no property damage resulted, other than the damage to my own car. Since this happened at night, I left the car in the parking lot. Then I brought the owner and the gas station attendant over to look at the damage. The next day, when a AAA service car took my car to the Volvo dealer, several miles away, I was able to see that the only damage was to the disc brake and the fender when the car collapsed on top of the loose wheel. This was really fantastic: The best car ever made! Here with the left front end scrapping the ground through the disc brake shield and riding on three wheels, I was going in a perfect straight line. I created a scratch mark for several hundred feet on the road.

What a design! They took such a condition into consideration when they designed the car! Amazing! And all this happened three weeks before our forthcoming trip to Texas. The problem that I faced with the car was to get it back from the Volvo dealer in a repaired condition before leaving Michigan. When I had the police come to the parking lot the day after the accident, in order to make out an accident report, I asked the cop, Why doesn’t the vehicle bureau deduct points for coasting in such a stricken vehicle and not getting anybody hurt. He was at first puzzled and then agreed that such a possibility should be designed into the Michigan laws. The owner of the gas station realized the dangerous situation that I was involved in and quite readily paid the $356 in damages which included a brand new wheel and tire. I was so sick and tired of wearing out my cars and getting them damaged, that I really looked forward to the arrangement that TACOM had at Fort Hood. What the Government does with transportation for the liaison representative is this: the liaison representative leases a car from Harbor-Short Oldsmobile in Killeen on a monthly basis.

For this service the man assigned to the SLAVE program is allowed to put on 1250 miles a month for a leasing cost of $250 a month. In addition Uncle Sam pays for the gasoline that was used for official business. I was looking forward to letting my Volvo and Mercedes cars rest for a while instead of subjecting them to constant punishment.

The last weekend in Detroit was spent as follows: Dolores and Diana went with Sandy and Neal and their children to Pittsburgh for another Miracle Service. I had a lot of work to do around the house: cut the grass; change from screen windows to storm windows. I had to pay a lot of bills some three months in advance since I did not want to have my mail forwarded to Texas. I asked the neighbors, the Huhns, across the street to collect all of the mail - I would pick it up during my mid-term visit. That is, in the middle of the three month assignment in Texas, since the liaison representative is allowed to come home for one week. Thus, I would be flying back towards the middle of November, and all the bills such as Auto Insurance, Home Mortgage, Gas, Telephone, Electricity, Water and Trash collection had to be paid up in advance for at least two months - preferably three months. I made arrangements for my secretary and her roommate to take care of our Siamese cat, Bubbles. The newspaper boy’s sister volunteered to take care of our rabbit and they together, were willing to take care of the leaf collection and trashing during the coming fall months. I felt that the newspaper boy was too busy with his deliveries and therefore, he, alone, would not be able to handle the hundreds of pounds of leaves that come down on our front and back yards during October and November.

Diana was, in a way, looking forward to Texas as we had told her so much about horses and pony clubs at Fort Hood and she also was looking forward to playing hooky from her present school, Trinity Lutheran where she started her 2nd grade at the beginning of September. She knew that she was going to be enrolled in a public school in Texas, but that did not bother her too much. Actually Dolores and I were more concerned with the interruption in her present schooling and her being enrolled in a strange school with kids that speak with a drawl. Nevertheless, we were all looking forward to this trip.

Dolores and Diana came back Sunday afternoon, towards evening, with Sandy and Neil from their trip to the Kathryn Kuhlman service in Pittsburgh. It had taken place Saturday. They were in a very happy mood and soon after Neil’s and Sandy’s departure we were packing our Samsonite bags. I told Dolores and Diana that I was going to get them new outfits - western wear, in Texas and ‘The smart traveler travels light.’ Therefore, it only took about an hour to do most of the packing. Actually, Diana left a small duffle bag in Neil’s van that we now needed. It contained her shoes. So at the last moment Diana and I had to make a trip to Sandy’s and Neil’s home in St Clair Shores. This was actually a relief for Dolores, in her packing, not having Diana and me around for one hour. We went to bed peacefully looking forward to our airplane trip to Texas the next morning.

Chapter 2

THE SWIMMING POOL

Dear reader, before we get to Texas I must tell about our swimming pool and what took place there this past summer. The reason for that is because it finally cleared up in my mind as to why Dolores’s cervical cancer was not caught at an earlier stage and why it had progressed to an advanced stage before she was hospitalized and a biopsy taken. As I said before, I had read about ten or twelve books on the cancer subject since Dolores was stricken. In several of the books when a discussion took place about cervical cancer, it was stated that the time period between an atypical cell indication with a Pap smear and the more obvious cancer symptoms of bleeding, was anywhere from two to five years. It was stated that the cancer cells stay locally on the cervical membrane for several years before a virtual explosion takes place and the cells spread into the uterine and pelvic areas. The puzzle in my mind had always been as to why it was that in Dolores’s case all the Pap smears which she had faithfully taken every six months were always negative. Sure she had cervicitis - a discharge infection in 1973. She was cauterized by a gynecologist here in Mt Clemens; yet, all of the Pap smears were always negative.

In P. M. Sutton’s The Nature of Cancer for instance, the following is stated on page 130: One of the commonest of malignant tumors in women is carcinoma of the uterus (womb) and this usually starts in the neck (or cervix) of the uterus at the far end of the vagina. Once the growth has become advanced it is difficult to treat properly, mainly because it extends across the pelvis and starts to block off the kidney’s connection with the bladder. There are good reasons for believing that this only happens many years after the cancer has started, and that for a long time it lies there silent, causing the patient no harm and, if detectable, capable of complete removal by a small operation, and in C. S. Cameron’s The Truth About Cancer page 202: Cancer that arises in surface membranes, such as the severing of the cervix or the lining o f the cavity of the uterus, continually sheds cells from its surface into the vagina. There they float, so to speak, in the normal vaginal mucus. (Normal cells are shed in this fashion too, but at a slower rate.) By withdrawing a little secretion from the upper vagina and from the opening of the cervix, and by staining the cells with special dyes, the nature of the cells present in the smear can be determined with a high degree of accuracy. Specifically, when cancer is present in the cervix, cancer cells can usually be seen in the smears…The exciting feature of the smear method is that it can reveal or strongly suggest the presence of cancers so small that they cannot readily be seen or felt. And of course such cancers are early and highly curable. Smears are also of great value to identifying cancer in a cervix which is already so distorted by co-existing benign disease-tears, infection, and inflammation that the malignant process is obscured.

There is even a possibility that the smear will reveal the presence of cancer cells in the vaginal fluid before cancer in the usual sense is present: How is that possible? We have seen that cancer studied through the microscope shows two main features: First, the individual cells differ in characteristic ways from normal cells. Second cancer cells arrange themselves differently from the orderly patterns of normal tissues. But experience with the vaginal smear technique of diagnosis has revealed a new condition that can be thought of as midway between what is normal and what is cancer. Occurring in the cervix, it consists of a cluster oft cells - which individually look like cancer cells, but they lack the other criterion of cancer - they are not invading or reaching out into normal adjacent areas as cancer cells usually do. These colonies of cancer cells have remained strictly confined to a single small area. The name for this condition is cancer-in-situ, that is, cancer in place. It is also known as non-invasive cancer.

Actually, there is some difference of opinion among the experts over whether this condition is really cancer. Most authorities believe that cancer in-situ usually represents the earliest beginning of true cancer and that therefore it must be eradicated promptly. On the other hand, it sometimes continues in this cocoon phase of inactivity for long periods-perhaps years. Eventually it either disappears or becomes a true, actively invading cancer.

There is no way of predicting what cancer-in-situ is up to. But since its total elimination is relatively simple and safe, the best medical practice is to get rid of it, and thereby remove the risk of cancer. This stage of cancer - if it is cancer should be curable in all cases.

So if cancer-in-situ is a forerunner of the commonest kind of cancer of the uterus and if, as appears likely, it can be identified accurately by means of the vaginal smear, then regular performance of that test -say at six-month intervals - should make death from cancer of the cervix a rare event instead of the first cause of death from cancer among women.

It is further stated in several texts that the Pap smear is 90 to 95% effective in detecting atypical cells. Therefore, it had always been a puzzle to me as to why atypical cells were not detected years earlier, in the case of Dolores. Not being a medical man I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. However, being an engineer the following mathematical probability takes place when four Pap smears are taken over a two year period, let us say, and each one is 90% effective: What happens is that in each case only 10% of atypical cell cases go undetected. Thus, the first time around, the odds are 9 out of 10 that if there are atypical cells they will be detected; the second time the odds are 9 out of 10; the third time they are 9 out of 10; and the fourth time they are 9 out of 10. Thus the odds for a woman with atypical cells not to be detected in four consecutive Pap smear tests are the following: 9 x 9 x 9 x 9 to 1 or 6561 to 1 against. Now, if atypical cells were already present over a four year period then the odds are 6561 x 6561 to 1 or 43,046,661 to 1 against not being detected. Thus, a mathematical million to one shot took place which inherently rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn’t believe that my wife was a million to one shot in cancer detection by the Pap smear test. For a whole year I was wondering what went wrong and I couldn’t come up with any answers. She offered no clues as to why, in her case, the Pap tests were always negative. The doctor in Mt. Clemens, Doctor Phelps, did say to her at the time of cauterization and in regard to the discharge she was having, that she will someday get cervical cancer, but he was basing his opinion on the experience he had gained over the years in treating women. In other words, he was saying that a woman with severe discharge is a risk case for cervical cancer, even though at this time the Pap smear results of Dolores were negative.

The way we found out that there was something wrong with Dolores - that is, something more severe than discharge was when she started to have irregular bleeding in late November of 1973 and this at first was thought to have been an interruption in the normal menstrual cycle. However, the bleeding was persistent and what was odd about it was that it was on a daily basis, maybe a teaspoon of blood a day. At first she thought it went away then it came back and stayed on. She went to Doctor Phelps in November, just before the irregular bleeding and took a Pap smear. It was negative. After the bleeding started she went to a lady doctor here in Mt. Clemens who prescribed a different type of bathing technique. In January, 1974, Dolores was exercising in the gym and I think her thoughts were that the bleeding was caused by superficial lacerations near the lips of the vagina which was due to either an infection or strong detergent in the soap she was using while bathing - she always bathed rather than showered.

At the end January, Dolores looked around for another gynecologist due to the persistence of the bleeding. She drove by a medical professional building at Twelve mile road in Warren - by this time she had lost faith in the doctors in Mt. Clemens, and went to the office of Drs. Katzen, Jordan and Bonneville.

Since I work about a mile from this building in Warren, I joined her in the office. However, since the office was so packed I left again and went back to work. I came back about two hours, after her initial appointment time. Now she was-inside and being examined by Doctor Bonneville, and after a few minutes he showed her into his office and he called me in. He said that he examined her and that nothing strange appeared to be happening. He thought that the bleeding was due to a laceration on the lips of the vagina and that there wasn’t anything serious to worry about; that if she had any more problems she should contact him. In any case, he wanted to hear from her in two weeks. Now it was the middle of February and Dolores went back to the office. The bleeding had continued throughout, since the first visit.

He examined her. Being that she had been a surgical nurse, common sense told her that there was something seriously wrong. So she urged the doctor to rush her into the hospital for a biopsy and D&C to see just what was wrong. She must have made good sense to the doctor because he did make arrangements with South Macomb Hospital to get her in on an emergency basis. Since there was a long waiting line for admittance, it took another two weeks to actually get her into the hospital. Now, Doctor Bonneville did the exploratory surgery. Sure enough what he found was invasive squamous carcinorma of the cervix but I will come back to that later. Let us go to what happened at the swimming pool in late spring of 1974.

What happened was that the swimming pool in our back yard was leaking water into the ground. That wasn’t anything new - for years it was leaking. This spring, however, after I had drained the water and scrubbed, the vinyl at the insistence of Dolores, the situation was much more aggravated. When I refilled the pool with water it came down several feet from the normal level in a matter of days and also the water started to fill between the steel backing and the vinyl. Consequently, I looked for a repair service that specialized in this kind of swimming pool. I located a Mr. Yates from Belair Pool Repair Service. He came out and looked at our pool, gave us an estimate of what was needed, and what costs were involved. I felt that the drain pipe was broken. He felt that in addition to repairing the drain pipe, the vinyl should be replaced since it was 8 years old. To make a long story short, I wanted to have the swimming pool ready for the summer especially since Dolores was now coming out of the hospital after receiving chemotherapy treatment. Therefore, I let the man go ahead with the job - not only fix the drain pipe but also replace the vinyl at a cost of $1,250. The man completed the job. I was happy that we would have another summer’s usage out of this pool, especially since in the back of my mind, I felt that it probably would be the last summer in Dolores’ life. Now, barely a week after the job was completed I was watching the All-Star game on television. Dolores and Diana were swimming with a bunch of neighbors’ kids. I was completely engrossed in the baseball game. Sometime during the middle of the game she calls me and tells me there is a little bit of sand accumulating on the vinyl under the water return pipe hole coming from the filter system. A little while later, in between innings, she shows me the sand underneath the hole. I go back to watching the ball game. The next day when I came home from work she asked me if I had taken a look at the pool when I left for work in the morning; then, she told me the bad news: all of the four steel structural walls along the four slides of the pool had buckled. They had loosened from the concrete in which they were imbedded and the whole swimming pool was ruined: I went over to the pool and noticed a towel which she had stuffed in the water return hole and then realized that she had done the worst: stuffing that hole with the towel, the water leak, which apparently was due to a broken sand imbedded pipe behind the steel and concrete, saturated the sand and created such a high pressure behind the steel wall that it overcame the water pressure in the ¾ filled pool. Consequently, the steel wall loosened from the concrete and buckled. Then a chain reaction took place in which the other three walls of the pool also buckled.

We had Mr. Yates come out again. He told us that to repair the pool now would cost somewhere around $4,000 and confirmed that the damage was caused by her plugging up the hole and letting the water build up behind the steel wall. I couldn’t believe it! One week out of the hospital and she causes me $4,000 worth of damage! And all that because of her neurosis about a little bit of sand getting into the pool from the water return pipe.

You should have seen the chagrin that I had felt: Why was she so concerned about a little bit of dirt? I just couldn’t figure it out. Why was it in her nature to get hysterical about dirt to such an extent? The next few days I thought and thought about it. Then I came back to her health and how the cervical cancer had remained undetected for such a long time until the obvious bleeding. It finally came to me: She must have washed herself out before taking the Pap smears: That’s it! That’s got to be the reason that the tests were always negative. There is no other explanation. I then asked her if there was a time within which a woman should not wash before taking a Pap test. She told me that in her last examination by the radiologist, Doctor Spitzer told her that she shouldn’t wash within 48 hours of taking the Pap smear test. This was now a year and a half after the discovery of the cervical cancer by Doctor Bonneville: That was the missing clue. I asked her about all the other earlier Pap tests that she had taken - had she abstained from washing? She thought about it and then realized that she had washed herself within 12 hours of taking the Pap test every time. That was the reason that all of the Pap tests taken earlier were always negative: No doctor, prior to the radiologist had ever told her to abstain from washing before taking the Pap test, and that is going back 10 to 15 years. Not one of the dozen books on cancer that dealt with the feminine organ ever mentioned that a women should abstain from douching within 48 hours of her Pap smear examination. There must be millions and millions of women in the United States that are unaware that the Pap smear test is ineffective as a detection device if she washes before seeing the doctor. It was all that training as a surgical nurse that brought with it this mania about a little bit of dirt or a little bit of secretion and odor that a gynecologist might detect that caused Dolores to always wash and sterilize everything including her own body! The doctors on the other hand, assume that a woman knows that there is a time factor involved with the Pap test- that she should not wash before taking the test. Sometimes they forget to tell their patients. Lots of times they are so busy taking care of sick people that they forget preventive medicine. Sometimes a gynecologist gives instructions to his medical secretary or nurse to tell the patient before taking the Pap test. Sometimes they forget.

According to the American Cancer Society, the U.S. death rate from uterine cancer today continues to decline and is about one-third the rate of 1945. The Society, which contributed about $1 million to help win acceptance for the Pap smear, attributes the steady decline to the continual educational programs for women and improvements in detection and treatment. Still, the Society ranks cancer of the uterus as third among the cancer killers of American women today. According to the most recent survey conducted by the American Cancer Institute, more than 86,000 new cases of uterine cancer will be detected and an estimated 11,000 women will die of the disease this year. In a current study, the Society reports, With wider application of the Pap test, many more lives can be saved, especially from cervical cancer.

The question remaining in my head is why doesn’t the ACS furnish each gynecologist with a plaque to be hung in the waiting room saying:

LADIES, IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU TAKE A PAP TEST EVERY SIX MONTHS. THAT IS TWICE A YEAR. FURTHERMORE, DO NOT DOUCHE WITHIN 48 HOURS OF TAKING THE TEST. IT MAY SAVE YOU LIFE.

With that alone, I think the death rate could be cut by 25 percent!

Chapter 3

THIS TEXAS

A thousand miles of shore

A thousand kinds of lure

A thousand years of lore

A thousand roads to tour

Texas to me was in a category by itself. In my mind it was the land of giants: The land where Howard Hughes got his roots; the land of Audie Murphy; the land of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, J.L. Travis and the Alamo. It was the land of beef and oil. It was the land of the Santa Fe railroad; the land of Babe Zaharias and Ben Hogan. This was the land of George S. Patton’s own Hell On Wheels. I really looked forward to this trip. This was the big one. This was the Big Country. I felt that in recent years that image was marred by freaks like Speck and Watson, Whitman and Oswald and now the émigré from Michigan - Gary Taylor- the homosexual who killed all those runaway boys. I wanted to stamp these characters out of my mind and see the real Texas.

By coming here at this time, September to December, we would have good weather. There would be lots of things to see on weekends - State Fairs, Rodeos, different cities, and it was still warm enough to go swimming. So in a way it would be an extension of the Michigan summer - an extra two and a half months of outdoor activities. It was precisely what Dolores and I needed in her fight for her life and adjustment to the knowledge that she had cancer and that there really was no medical cure for her case; that is, from a medical stand point her life could be prolonged through chemotherapy but chemotherapy in itself was not a cure. The religious healing was in a class by itself - a blessing that only a very few obtain. With me her religious healing was something of the nature of wait and see. The reason I say that is because it came during the exact time frame as her chemotherapy treatment and I felt that the disappearance of her tumor on her back, as viewed by way of a scan, could have been due to the chemical effects that were taking place from the chemotherapy.

Cactus Motel and Fort Hood

When we arrive in Killeen, Peter Morton, my predecessor, is waiting at the airport for us. He looks like a native Texan - ten gallon hat and western wear. The man is about 65 years old and in addition to his western wear he also has a huge calabash pipe in his mouth. Actually, in a lot of ways, he looks like General Douglas MacArthur, without the sunglasses. The first question he asks is, How did you like treetop Airlines? He was referring to Rio Airways which connects Dallas to Killeen. I mentioned that the flight was fine - my only problem was getting in and out of the plane. Dolores and Diana were seated in the front near the pilot and co-pilot. I remained in the back next to the door. That way I didn’t have to bend over and practically crawl to the front the plane. It only had sixteen seats for passengers, and the ceiling of the cabin is maybe 5 1/2 ft from the floor of the cabin.

Peter and I now take my family’s bags into his leased Oldsmobile. Right away an old nemesis comes up. It’s a two-door car which means that either Dolores or I are going to have to bend over getting to the back seat. She is nice enough to do it and of course it doesn’t bother Diana in the least bit. Dolores, of course, at this time was wearing a wig and her fear in getting into the back seat of a two-door car was that the wig would either move or be pushed off. I hated to get into the back seat of a two-door car because I am too big.

Peter now drives us through Killeen and he is giving us a run down of the place. There is Harbor-Short Oldsmobile where you pick up the lease car. They own half the town: besides the Oldsmobile dealership, they own a Title company, an insurance company and a real estate company. There is Connell Chevrolet, he owns the other half of town. He also got the Chrysler dealership and he gave his son Rio Airways as a birthday present! He also owns an insurance company and a real estate business.

Peter explains to me that there are only about five or six families that run this whole area. I see a Mercedes dealer. Wow, what a surprise - here in Killeen! I wondered who owned that piece of the action. Pretty soon we pass Killeen and are on our way towards Fort Hood. Actually, we are going to Copperas Cove which is nine miles from Killeen. Copperas Cove is a much quieter town than Killeen and as I will explain later, much safer. Also TACOM has an arrangement with the Cactus Motel in Copperas Cove - we lease an apartment for our liaison representative rather than rent a motel room on a nightly basis. That costs us $250 a month. Well, for a family of three this is an ideal situation because it means it has two bedrooms. In the back of my mind, I feel that if Dolores is going to sleep uneasily then she is going to have to sleep either alone in one of the rooms, or else Diana will sleep in a cot next to her mother and I in the other room. This is because I need a clear head for my job and cannot afford sleepless nights. Now the apartments of the Cactus Motel are located in a separate building. These are more or less for the permanent residents. The other building houses overnight transients. All of the apartments, I am told by Peter, are rented out and consequently we will be taking over his apartment. Since he is going to stay in town another four or five days to break me in, he is moving to one of the motel rooms in the other building.

The same afternoon, Peter takes me out to West Fort Hood and introduces me to the Field Support Activity staff. He introduces me to the permanent staff members; Mr. Stanley, who is in overall charge; Mr. Jim Veal who is in charge of electrical and mechanical problems; Mr. Grady Baker who is in charge of Armaments, Fire Control, Maintenance and Field Test problems; Mr. Dick Hefner who is in charge of Communications problems. He introduces me to the secretaries, Mrs. Mary Howell, Mr. Gloria Brandt, Mrs. Cynthia Allen and Mrs. Doris Goodman. Pretty soon he is introducing me to the representatives from the other commodity commands. First those that are due to leave within the next few days, like Peter, and then to one or two of the new replacements, like me, who had already arrived. Pretty soon we are in his leased car again and he is taking me to the main post at Fort Hood to visit our Field Maintenance 0ffice technicians: the permanent people from TACOM that are located at Fort Hood. Their job is to make sure that the various divisions; that is, the Second Armored Division and the First Cavalry have the proper supplies for maintaining their ground vehicles in order. He then points out the stockade with the barbed wire while we are on our way to the motor pools. Here the vehicles are kept in a ready state for field exercises in the mornings and actually kept in combat readiness the rest of the time. I see every conceivable ground vehicle that the Army has in service: gasoline trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers; there are tanks, M109’s, M88’s, which are tank retrievers, and there are Gamma Goats, and the Goer vehicles. Also in the background I see heavy equipment transporters M35 - two and a half ton trucks, and road graders. This equipment is neatly lined up in rows. The supporting type equipment is usually parked in an area facing the highway. The ground vehicles that would be used in warfare are parked on the other side of the maintenance building, again neatly parked in rows.

As one comes up from the western entrance to Fort Hood one first encounters the units of the First Cavalry. Only after several miles does one come to the motor pools belonging to the Second Armored Division of General Patton III. The First Cavalry is under General Beckton. As far as I know he is the only black general in the U.S. Army. Both of these units have very distinguished World War II records and both units have museums that elaborate in detail their past activities and history.

We have business to do in checking up on the performance of two test items under SLAVE that we are monitoring: Permafoam tires, and folding sidewall tires. Now the Permafoam tires as the word implies, are specially made by the Goodyear Corporation and basically they are tires that are filled with plastic foam; thus, they are not pneumatic tires. Ergo, these tires are not susceptible to deflation upon being hit by small arms fire. The folding sidewall tires, on the other hand, collapse when the air is taken out or when the tire is deflated, then the rubber carcass of the walls folds in such a way that the tire can continue to be used on the vehicle without having to be changed. Currently, we have these tires on the Gamma Goat. The Permafoam tires we have on road graders. The rubber man at TACOM, who has been monitoring these tests, Roger McGirk, is interested in the current status and condition of these tires at Fort Hood. Thus, it is the liaison representative’s job to keep him informed on the performance of these tires, on each of the vehicles. The man who has the responsibility to monitor the tires at Fort Hood under The SLAVE program is a Captain Herman.

Before coming down here, I had contacted all of the sponsors at TACOM of tests that we had undergoing here at Fort Hood. I contacted Roger McGirk, I contacted project managers of various vehicles such as the M48 Tank and the M60 Tank, the person in charge of keeping tabs on commercial vehicles that are being tested as a replacement for the military jeep; I contacted people that were in charge of the Remote Control Vehicle. I did this in order to be completely informed on the status of these programs and what was wanted as far as information over the next few months. Now, what surprised me almost immediately was that here I am told by Peter Morton that the tank tracks’ rubber pads in the track shoes, were failing after short usage - whereas in my conversations with the project managers of the M60 series tank, no one mentioned any problem of this nature. I am told by Peter that General Beckton will have a meeting on the usage of the T -142 track and pads this Thursday. The problem had been so severe that it reached the very top of the Division.

Peter now gives me some background information on Fort Hood: It has 53,000 soldiers at the present time; has three air bases and contains the following units under III Corps: 2 Armored Divisions, 1st Cavalry, 6th Air Cavalry and training center for 9th Armored Division. Peter tells me, The total weekly government payroll checks at Fort Hood are actually larger than the total weekly payroll checks for all of our troops in Europe. This is because in addition to the 53,000 soldiers there are 200,000 civilians and dependents. Thus, Fort Hood supports a 1/4 million people.

When we come home from work that evening, Dolores and Diana are sitting around the swimming pool outside our apartment. Diana is quite happy. She is swimming and diving and there is another child near her. Dolores is quite upset, she is almost crying. I ask her What is the matter? What happened? She tells me, The swimming pool water is not heated. The water is too cold for her even though the air temperature in the afternoon had reached 88 degrees. After the accident at our pool last summer I had Mr. Yates come out. I explained to him that my wife was suffering from terminal cancer and that this probably would be the last summer in which she could swim. When he heard that he decided to fix the pipes gratis so that there wouldn’t be any leakage. As far as the buckled walls, he said that after the pool is filled up with water, the walls would hold and that we would not have to renovate the whole swimming pool this summer. So he sent his crew out and got the pool in workable condition within a week. Therefore, we were able to use the swimming pool during the summer. In any case Dolores always liked the water to be quite high in temperature; let us say around 85 degrees. Often times, this bothered me because the water wasn’t really refreshing, especially after driving home during the summer in 90 degree heat. Anyway, here in Texas the afternoon air temperature at the tail end of September was in the upper 80’s and in the evening, somewhere in the ‘60’s. Thus the water in the swimming pool was probably around 70-74 degrees, and that was quite cool.

I put on my bathing suit, run out and joined Diana in the water. I have to swim six or ten laps to get adjusted to the water temperature. I could well understand that to Dolores this would have been a shock - jumping into the water from sitting in 88 degree air temperature. So, it meant that she would be unable to swim at the Cactus Motel. Furthermore, we knew that in three or four weeks the air temperatures would start falling rapidly and then it would be impossible for anybody to go swimming. At pool side, Dolores was reading one of her Kathryn Kulhman books. She had already bought five of these. Four were in English and the one she bought for me was in German. This was because the English version ran out. The four that were in English were Miss Kulhman’s, God Can Do It Again, Ten Thousand Miles for A Miracle, How Big is God, and Nothing Is Impossible With God. The one that she bought for me in German was Ich Glaube An Wunder (I Believe in Miracles).

Pretty soon we get dressed to go out with Peter. He wants to show us the town of Copperas Cove. We meet Peter and together we walk to the shopping center. Now, this shopping center is from all appearances like any other fairly large shopping center in America, except for one thing: running smack through the parking lot, without any boundaries or markings, is a street! That makes it unique. I have never seen anything like that in my whole life; A street that is left to the imagination of the driver as to its width, lanes and right of way. I like that. The guy who named that a street must have had some imagination; he must have been an artist. When one comes in from the highway, Route 190, there is a sign with a name. On the other side of the parking lot, Avenue F, one again sees the same name, but how that street runs in between, no one will ever know.

We walk by a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, a Dairy Queen, a pizza parlor called Dago Don’s, a pawn shop, a book store, a dry cleaners, a camera shop, a food store called Food Fair, and a general store called Gibsons. Then we come out on Avenue F and cut back towards the Cactus Motel. Here we walk past several pecan trees. Diana and Peter are examining several of the pecans that had fallen. Peter points out that, These pecans are as good as those in the store - even better because they had never been sprayed. Diana is fascinated and jumps up to reach for a pecan from a branch. Dolores is by now quite a bit tired from walking as we gradually make our way back to the motel. When we reach the motel, Dolores and Diana go back to the apartment and I join Peter for a bite in the Cactus Restaurant. It is in a separate building adjacent to the Cactus Motel. Instead of ordering dinner we each order a hamburger.

Peter now introduces me to a few people in the motel. He had become friendly with a fellow by the name of Sam Stauffer and his wife, Trudy. Sam is in the