Now, you know this love affair with life has a hitch in it. Here’s how it started.

             On my walk to work many mornings, I’d cough up phlegm and spit, and I was spitting blood. Not just once, but quite a few times in the short half-block jaunt to work. That may have worried lots of people. Not me. I was 25, in love with life, and never considered the possibility of being sick, or dying. About three years before that, I had coughed up some blood and saw a doctor in another small town. He gave me a TB skin test, which was negative. Then he examined my throat and advised me to quite smoking, or to smoke less. At the time, I smoked all the time – cigarettes by the dozens, cigars, and on occasion, a pipe. I inhaled them all. They were like the oxygen of my life.

             This bleeding routine went on for months. Then in the fall of 1961, something happened that forced me to have a second look for a possible problem. During those years, I did a little drinking, but seldom to excess. On one lovely fall night, I probably had about four or five beers before returning home, and those four or five were far more than my usual dose of spirits.

               When I got home, I coughed a few times. My mouth filled with blood. It was frightening. I went into the bathroom and had a look at my mouth, but nothing there was bleeding. I leaned over the toilet, coughed a few more times, and expelled a lot of blood, enough to turn the toilet water to a rich dark red. I’d cough again, and there continued to be bloody eruptions. I considered going to the hospital and checking myself in. But I didn’t.

            Instead, I rinsed my mouth, set my alarm clock for 7 a.m., stripped to my boxer shorts and T-shirt, and folded down my couch into a bed. Before I went to sleep, I had a chat with God. I asked him to keep me safe through the night, and if that wasn’t possible, to forgive me my many sins and to consider me as a candidate for Heaven in case I didn’t wake up in my new apartment.

            I guess God heard my prayer because I did wake up, and I wasn’t coughing blood in the morning. But I was worried, very, very worried. There was no question now that I had to find out what was happening, and why.

Chapter 2        Days of Discovery

            The “Sanatorium” title of this piece tells you a lot about where it is going, but in those glorious fall days of 1961, I hadn’t a clue. I knew almost nothing about tuberculosis. My first memory of the disease was seeing posters at the post office warning: “Spitting Spreads TB.” Most Saturdays in my hometown of Austin, Minnesota, my dad would go to the post office to check his business mail. He was a stock broker and always had mail. I went along because even at age 6 or 7, I was collecting stamps. He got the letters, I got the stamps. I found the spitting signs to be a curiosity, but they never kept me from spitting. After all, I was just a kid. All kids spit, or as my wife Marilee says, all boys spit. There were more important things going on in the early 1940s, such as World War II. The post office had large beckoning posters of Uncle Sam pointing and saying, “I want you.” I was well aware of the war, and even my crewcut at the time was called a heinie haircut – heinie being a derogatory slang term for a German soldier. Kids in those days had three similarities – the heinie haircut, white T-shirts, and blue overalls.

            As a young adult, I knew that my mother’s mom, Elizabeth Sturz Tausche, had died of tuberculosis when she was 32. That was in 1912. I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of tuberculosis when I had the lung hemorrhage. My guess was that I’d had one cigar too many.

            Apparently, that wasn’t my doctor’s first guess. He seemed to know what he was looking for when he took my history and ordered an x-ray and some blood work. I was to return early the next week for the results.

            The high that I was feeling all summer was still there, despite the bleeding and the visit to the doctor. Plus, I had work to do and games to cover. On a Friday night, I was headed for Weyauwega, about 40 miles from Oshkosh, to cover a high school football game. My old 1957 Plymouth, an overpowered low-slung cruiser that had served me well for a while, threw a rod just outside Weyauwega. The Chevy garage sent a wrecker for me and the car, and while waiting around the showroom that evening, I spotted a brand new Corvair Monza coupe. It was black with a red interior and 4 on the floor. The car was calling my name: “John. Buy me. Buy me tonight.”

            A mechanic who had been checking my Plymouth came into the showroom to tell me it wasn’t worth fixing. I did the only logical thing. I bought the Corvair. I didn’t have the cash for a down payment, but I did sign the paperwork. As soon as I could return with the necessary cash, the $2200 beauty would be all mine. There is more to the Corvair story than I can tell you now, because that would be getting ahead of the story.

            I picked up the new car Monday afternoon, and I was like – well – a kid with a new car, his first new car ever after a steady procession of junkers that lasted a year and died.

            I drove my new car back to the doctor’s office at the Oshkosh Clinic, even though the clinic was just around the block from the Daily Northwestern. They were punctual at the Oshkosh Clinic, and I didn’t have to wait but about 5 minutes before I saw the doctor. He got out my x-ray, put it up against a light box, and pointed to a quarter-sized whitish spot on my right lung. My blood work showed an elevated white count. Those things, along with the hemorrhages, led him to this conclusion -- I probably had tuberculosis! I sucked in a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. I did it again, and again.

            If the doctor was saying anything, I didn’t hear it. I was dazed. Finally, I heard the doctor say: “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to see a tuberculosis specialist.” The place I was sending me was Hickory Grove Sanatorium, just outside of DePere, Wisconsin. The doctor I was supposed to see was Douglas Gutheil.

            “When should I go?” I asked. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible,” he replied.

            The doctor knew I was upset, and tried to console me by telling me that tuberculosis was not a death sentence, and that there were medications that were very helpful. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he cautioned.

            I wasn’t ahead of myself yet. I was beside myself. I told you that I didn’t know much about tuberculosis, but I did know that it had killed thousands upon thousands of people in the past. As for the present in ’61, I had no idea of how many patients lived and how many died.

            For the first time in my life, I wondered if I would be among those who would die. Was it possible that I might not live forever, after all.

Chapter 3        The micobacterium and me

            “You’ve got bugs, son.”

            Doctor Douglas Gutheil was referring to micobacterium tuberculosis, the critters that cause TB.

            In a way, I was relieved to hear the news. I had spent the past week in a sort of limbo. Doctors and the Oshkosh Health Department were running my life. I couldn’t go back to work because it was likely that I had tuberculosis, which is a communicable disease.

            Doctor Gutheil’s edict ended any speculation about where I was going. I was about to become a patient in Hickory Grove Sanatorium. My job as a sports editor was over. My days and nights of charging around in the cool Corvair were over. I didn’t have much of a love life at the time, so that didn’t matter.

            I had a lot of things to take care of, a lot of things to explain, and a lot of plans to make. The health department would get in touch with everyone that I had close contact with, and they would get a skin test for tuberculosis. I had to wrap up my job. Fortunately, Tom Schwalm and Sam Heaney, the owners of the newspaper, said I’d be welcome to return whenever my treatment ended.

            Entering the sanatorium was not a matter of choice. If you refused, you would be taken to court and ordered into treatment.

            Doctor Gutheil was a calm and reassuring chap. He was the kind of guy you liked instantly, and I suspect, the kind of guy that women fell in love with instantly. He was trim and tanned. He had dark hair, combed straight back, blue eyes and a square jaw. He was about 45 and had a few wrinkles, but they were all smile wrinkles. I could see him in a movie role as the commander of a submarine. He was perfect for the part. “Scope Up!” “Fire Torpedoes!” “Dive!”

            His role that day was to examine x-rays. He and I and his nurse were sitting in a darkened room with lots of light boards on the walls. Lots of my x-rays were on the walls. He went from one to the other, pointing out problems. The largest “cavity” was on my right lung, about the size of a quarter. It was right where you would put your hand if you were doing a left-handed Pledge of Allegiance. There were a few smaller spots on the right lung, and a smattering of little spots on the left lung.

            Confirmation of tuberculosis involves a combination of looking at x-rays and taking a sputum test. In a sputum test, you do some deep coughing and spit the proceeds into a vial. If you’ve ever had a bad chest cold and were coughing lots of crud, you were coughing up sputum.

            The vial of sputum went to the laboratory at Hickory Grove, where a technician applied a special dye and looked at the sample under a microscope. In my case, the tech saw “bugs.” In a lot of cases, the sputum has to be cultured, and then tested in a week or so to see if any micobacterium have grown. Either way, if the “bugs” are there, you have the disease and you get invited to a place like Hickory Grove.

            As you enter the front door of the sanatorium, the first thing you see is the office and reception area. If you keep walking, you pass a pay telephone, and snack and soda machines on the right. The doctor’s office is on the left. Go a bit farther and there is an x-ray room and laboratory. Keep going, and you’re in your new home.

            I didn’t go that far that day. I did see some of the patients because Doctor Gutheil’s door was open. There were men and women drifting by, some in just pajamas and many in bathrobes, fetching a Royal Crown Cola, calling home, or just hanging around and visiting with each other. If any of those people were consumptives, they didn’t look it. As a matter of fact, they looked perfectly healthy to me. Even more surprising, they seemed happy. That encouraged me.

            I wish I could tell you what the doctor told me that day, but I remember almost none of it other than the “you got bugs” quip. This happens to me a lot when I see a doctor about something that is worrying me. Once I tell the doctor what is worrying me, and once he gives an initial response, I am relieved or terrified and hear almost nothing else that he might have to say. In this instance, I walked out with a mimeographed sheet of paper listing the things I should bring for my stay at Hotel Hickory Grove (Just kidding about the hotel. Somebody recently quipped that I had spent all that time in a resort.)

            There wasn’t much on the list. Razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, pajamas, bathrobe, a couple of pairs of pants and a couple of shirts. If you didn’t have these things, they would be provided. As it turns out, I didn’t have any pajama bottoms, but I did have a few old tops around the apartment. I slept in my shorts and t-shirt. I didn’t have a bathrobe either, but figured that since I was going to be in a hospital, maybe I didn’t need them.

            While I was packing up, I added a few books, some paper and envelopes, my address book, and a few newspapers. Those things all fit in one small, cardboard-like suitcase that I had hauled around since my high school days. I also placed my Olympia typewriter next to the suitcase, since I was going to bring that, too. The rest of my stuff went into boxes, which a buddy stored in his attic. Packing didn’t take long. Neither did giving notice that I would be leaving my apartment.

            Two days later, I was headed for Hickory Grove.

Chapter 4 Another Life to Live

            I wasn’t in any hurry to get to Hickory Grove, so I drove county roads that bordered the Fox River. I passed through such towns as Wrightstown, then Little Rapids, which bordered a section of river with scenic rapids. When I saw the sign for Lost Dauphin Park, I knew I was almost there because the park bordered the sanatorium grounds.

            Hickory Grove sat atop a wooded hill and overlooked the river. It was a scene I was to spend thousands of hours looking at as a patient. I never tired of the beauty of the grounds and river, but I’d have given almost anything to be back in my apartment overlooking a side street in Oshkosh.

            I parked my Corvair in the sanatorium parking lot, grabbed my suitcase and typewriter, and with a sense of false confidence, strode into Hickory Grove Sanatorium.

            Hickory Grove was built in the early 1900s, and named for the woods that surrounded it. In those days, all the sanatoriums had names that summoned up thoughts of peace and rest. And most were in isolated settings on the outskirts of communities. They had such names as Pure Air, Mineral Springs, Rocky Knoll and River Pines. In those days, they were also a place to die.

            Their isolation was no accident. In the first half of the 1900s, one of the ways to keep TB from spreading was to isolate people with tuberculosis in sanatoriums. Rest and good nutrition, given enough time, cured many patients. But in the early part of the 20^th Century, TB remained one of the major killers of people.

            Nurse Tischer, a woman I would come to know and love, greeted me upon my arrival. The entry to Hickory Grove was in the middle of the building, and led to a long hallway with wings to the left and to the right. My room was to the left. I don’t recall what she told me as we approached my room. I was too busy observing the other patients who were busy observing me.

            My room was about 12 x 10 feet, had four windows looking to the south, and contained a bed, a nightstand, a chair, and a small dresser. The bed frame was made of cast iron, painted tan. It was a design found almost exclusively in   hospitals, sanatoriums and other institutions. The floor in my room, and in the entire building, was terrazzo, a type of polished rock that was long-lasting and easy to keep clean.

            There were no pictures on the wall and no curtains. This definitely wasn’t home, but it would be my home for nine months, and for another nine or 10 months two years later.

            Nurse Tischer left me with printed material on the schedule of patient days and other rules and regulations. Rest was a requirement and was enforced, she said. The first rest period was from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and the second from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Bedtime was 9 p.m. She asked me which lung was infected, and I told her it was my right lung. She said that when I rest or sleep, I should sleep on my right side. I never asked why, but learned that it compressed the infected lung and limited lung movement while breathing, and hopefully, helped to heal the infected lung. That may or may not have made it easier for the lung to heal. There were many practices in the 1960s that were left over from earlier decades when there were no medications for tuberculosis. I think that sleeping on the infected side was probably one of them.

            If you like breakfast in bed, and other meals, too, this was the place to be. All meals were brought to your room. You could ask for extras of such things as milk or orange juice, but the menu was strictly the chef’s choice. The food was pretty basic, but it was well-prepared and more or less hot when it reached our rooms. I was about 135 pounds when I walked in the door of Hickory Grove, and 175 pounds when they released me. Testimony to the food, and to having nothing else to do but eat, read and rest.

            I am curious by nature, but I was especially curious about the other patients because I would be spending lots of time with them. I was the new kid on the block, and like every new-kid situation, I wondered if there was a buddy out there for me. It could make the difference between a barely tolerable stay, and one that might be fun.

            While I was wondering what to do next, the other patients began dropping in to visit with the new neighbor. One was Jim, who had the room next to mine. Jim was a Menominee Indian who lived on the Menominee Reservation about 40 miles west of Green Bay. He was tall and slender, like me, and a lot better looking. He was a couple of years older than me and had three or four children. There were lots of lonesome people in the San, but Jim was the most lonesome. He’d say, almost every day, “God, but I miss my kids.”

            In the other room next to mine was Mike, a cab driver who had spent most of his life in Jersey and New York and had the accent to prove it. He had a gnarly face, gravelly voice and a sweet (and sometimes cunning) disposition.

            Some of the other patients in my wing included Bob, a young Green Bay salesman; Gus and Al, middle-aged Menominee Indians; Peter, a 92-year-old who played minor league baseball when he was a kid; Rob, an inmate from the Green Bay Reformatory (prison), and Dennis, who was about 35 and spent all of his time crafting leather purses and other leather items.

            On the second floor at Hickory Grove were about 50 to 60 women. I had seen a few of them when I was being tested, and was eager to find out more about them. On one day of the week, Thursday, as I recall, we could intermingle. We could go to their floor, and they could come to ours.  I was looking forward to Thursday.

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Copyright John T. Wells 2002

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