Word: lopata
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Lance Corporal Walter Lopata made medical history last week when he sat up in his Boston hospital bed and said,"Hello-how are you?" He probably could have said more, but the doctors wouldn't let him try, lest he damage the delicate needlework in his throat. For Lopata had no larynx or vocal cords. These were removed in October after they had been torn to shreds by fragments from a Viet Cong grenade. What he had was a reconstructed throat, the first of its kind in the U.S. and probably in the world...
...Montgomery thought he had figured out a way to get around this, and the young Marine for whom he was called into consultation at Chelsea Naval Hospital was an ideal patient for the first operation. Lopata, 25, was essentially healthy, with no cancerous tissues to hamper healing, and a leg wound that would keep him in the hospital for weeks...
Appropriately, it was on Veterans Day last November that Dr. Montgomery and Navy Surgeon Robert Toohill embarked upon the first stage of restoring his speech. To make sure that Lopata's reconstructed windpipe would not let food into his lungs, they built an artificial valve just below the base of his tongue (see diagram) by cutting into his throat and turning two flaps of skin inward. Lopata had been breathing for a month through a hole lower down in his neck. The surgeons fitted this hole with a tube through which he could breathe, and made another opening above...
...Braves have Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Bob Rush, Bob Buhl, and a host of other younger hurlers. It is the best staff in the league, but is Spahn the stopper begins to show the long awaited signs of age, it could slow down considerably. Del Crandall and Stan Lopata make up a strong catching corps. But Schoendienst was the heart of this team; there is no one to take his place...
Selected from Yale were half-back Dennis McGill and end Paul Lopata. Gil Robertshaw of Brown and Bob Adelizzi of Dartmouth were also named. Players from the smaller colleges dominated the first team...