If Pain Likes Company

I just read this today and thought I'd share it. I wonder how much JFK's health problems stemmed from TMS.


President Kennedy's Health Secrets

SUMMARY
Physician Jeffrey Kelman discusses the extensive health ailments President John F. Kennedy suffered during his lifetime.


RAY SUAREZ: According to medical records, former President John F. Kennedy was in far greater pain and taking many more medications during his presidency than previously known.
Washington physician Jeffrey Kelman examined the records with historian Robert Dallek, whose excerpts from an upcoming biography appear in this month's Atlantic Monthly. Dr. Kelman joins us now. Well, John F. Kennedy was famously the youngest man elected to the office. But it sounds like he had been sick for a really long time.

DR. JEFFREY KELMAN: John Kennedy was sick from age 13 on. In 1930, when he was 13, he developed abdominal pain. By 1934 he was sent to the Mayo Clinic where they diagnosed colitis or it was called colitis. By 1940 his back started hurting him, by 1944 he had his first back operation, by 1947 he was officially diagnosed as having Addison's Disease.

And he was basically sick from then on through the rest of his life. He had two back operations, in '54 and '55, which failed. And he needed chronic pain medication from '55 through his White House years, until he died in Dallas. He was never healthy. I mean, the image you get of vigor and progressive health wasn't true. He was playing through pain most of the presidency.

By the time he was president, he was on ten, 12 medications a day. He was on antispasmodics for his bowel, paregoric, lamodal transatine [ph], he was on muscle relaxants, Phenobarbital, Librium, Meprobomate, he was on pain medications, Codeine, Demerol, Methadone, he was on oral cortisone; he was on injected cortisone, he was on testosterone, he was on Nembutal for sleep. And on top of that he was getting injected sometimes six times a day, six places on his back, by the White House physician, with Novocain, Procaine, just to enable him to face the day.

He had compression fractures in his low back, he had osteoporosis. He had a lot of surgery. In 1954, they put a plate in because the pain was so bad he needed, or they felt he needed to have his spine stabilized. It got infected in '55, they took the plate out. By the late '50s there were periods had he couldn't put his own shoes on because he couldn't bend forward.

RAY SUAREZ: And this is a man who also had to walk sideways down the stairs. You never saw this stuff in public apparently, but had trouble walking?

DR. JEFFREY KELMAN: He was on crutches. He couldn't bend down.

He was on enough pain medications to disable him. And he survived through it. He came out of it, and he performed at the highest level

 

Oh, DEFINITELY TMS walt...no doubt in my mind. In Steven's book he talks about a lot of famous people who have suffered needlessly. Sad...a whole life of a brilliant, yet troubled man, lived in pain...

 

Hi, Lala JFK may have gotten TMS at an early age because of anger and guilt related to his father's Prohibition Era activities with gangsters and affair with Gloria Swanson, knowing how that affair sorrowed his mother. In his own later years, JFK may have suffered guilt about his own marital infidelities.

I wish my unconscious would believe me that I am certain my pain is from repressed emotions. I'll just have to keep at it. Maybe down deep I'm still thinking some of it is from aging. Most friends my age or even 20 years younger have lower back pain and take Advil. But I tell myself their pain and mine is strictly from repressed emotions. I needed 2 advil today but it only stopped the lower back pain for about 4 hours. I refuse to take anything stronger. It's a crutch and I want to tough it out without any.

 

Wow, I had no idea. How could he function as President with all of that? Very sad, so much pain.

 

JFK's biographer said that despite the constant pain, he didn't let it affect his Presidency.
Reminds me of FD Roosevelt who also suffered longtime pain but was a great President.

 

Interesting stuff! Thanks for posting

 

You know what courage it takes to endure pain and not give up.
I'm still working on it.

I like what Arthur Ashe said:
"Never give up, no matter what the score is."

 

I too notice how Obama has aged. It's a tough job.
I bet Reagan had TMS because he never reconciled (forgave) his alcoholic father.
It could have led to Reagan's Alzheimer's.

 

good post walt

 

JFK was an inspirational figure and during my really bad days I would berate myself using him as an example. If he could run the White House on so many meds then I could surely manage to go to work, live a life and be happy!

It's likely he had TMS pain of some description, if it wasn't indeed fully responsible.