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  With loss of independence, sadness


By: Larry Tye
Boston Globe, July 7, 2002

 

 

It was not a very splendid life these last 18 months.

All he could see were objects held in front of his face. He was confined first to a bed, then a wheelchair. Eating on his own, on the best days, was a strain. Failed kidneys eventually required that he be connected to a dialysis machine every night, while worries about his breathing necessitated that a tracheal tube be on hand even when it was not inserted.

Ted Williams, as renowned for his prideful independence as for his slugging prowess, in the end was utterly dependent, largely isolated, and, according to close friends, losing the will to live.

''He just sat in his chair. He couldn't do anything. ... He didn't like that life. He hated it,'' said 91-year-old Elden Auker, Williams's teammate on the Red Sox, an adversary with the Tigers, and friend for more than 60 years.

''When I talked to him last Sunday the nurse had to hold the telephone receiver to his ear. He always called my wife `Mildred, the queen.' The last thing he said to me was, `How's the queen? Give her my love.' Then the nurse came on and said he had fallen asleep.''

Dom DiMaggio, another teammate and soulmate, also regrets that there were more down times than up since Williams had open heart surgery two Januarys ago. ''Just prior to this last relapse I counted approximately 12 or 14 of them,'' DiMaggio, who talked to Williams almost daily, recalled yesterday.

''I watched my brother Joe go through a similar ordeal for six straight months,'' DiMaggio added. ''I've seen the both of them, and I don't think I would want to go through that.''

Williams's persistent problems almost from the day of his surgery have prompted many medical specialists to ask whether it was wise to perform such a procedure on an 82-year-old patient with a history of two strokes, weak heart muscle, and lung problems. Dr. Jeffrey Borer, the New York cardiologist who fixed Williams's leaking mitral valve, concedes that the former Sox star was ''at extraordinarily high risk,'' but adds that Williams ''chose to take the risks.''

''We hope and expect that when we operate on people they'll survive more than 18 months,'' Borer said in an interview. ''But I think if Ted were available to tell you about it, he would tell you he was happy he had that additional time.''

Williams's son, John Henry Williams, has done most of the talking for his father the last 18 months. He was by his father's side when a team of 14 doctors, nurses, and technicians at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center spent 91/2 hours replacing a left mitral valve with pig tissue and tightening the ring holding the tricuspid valve in place on the right side of Williams's heart. John Henry also was on hand during Williams's recuperation at Sharp Hospital in San Diego, and a year ago when he was transferred to Florida, first to a rehab center, then home.

At each stage there were complications, from infections to a backup of body fluids and a need to return several times to a respirator. He also suffered kidney failure that required dialysis.

After each setback, however, there was some progress, and it was that forward movement that Williams's son and doctors preferred to focus on.

Sometimes it was simple things, such as three months after his operation when the aging slugger found the voice to ask his doctor for a glass of wine and the memory to recall that Borer had promised it, provided the surgery was successful. Or a year ago, when Williams had made sufficient progress to receive visitors ranging from former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda to Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight, and to be moved from intensive care to a rehab unit.

Yet following Williams's death on Friday, a number of friends and relatives wondered whether the progress ever was that substantial and whether the athlete who thrived on being active ever did adjust to his life as an invalid.

''He was very unhappy and uncomfortable,'' said Arthur ''Buzz'' Hamon, a friend and former business associate who visited Williams in San Diego and Florida. The frustration began to build years before his surgery, Hamon recalled, ''when he couldn't drive, he couldn't fish. He hated to be dependent on anyone because he was such a perfectionist.''

Back in Florida over the last year, Hamon added, things got worse. It was partly the inability to talk easily, or ingest solid foods. It also was that while his new nurses and therapists cared for all his bodily needs, they didn't talk baseball or otherwise indulge his passions. And old friends were discouraged from visiting regularly.

''At times he would say, `I feel like a prisoner,''' said Hamon. ''That was because of his situation, because he was so confined'' by his illness.

Bobby-Jo Williams Ferrell, Ted's oldest daughter, also worried about what life had become for her father.

''It was nothing but a total nightmare, a nightmare,'' she said in a telephone interview yesterday. ''He was stricken with several very bad infections. I am so sick in my heart that my father was made to go through all that.''

John Henry Williams, whom Ferrell says restricted her access to her father the last year, could not be reached for comment yesterday on what he thought of his father's quality of life the last 18 months.


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