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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