Word: novocain
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...said nothing about it. During the next few days the pain grew worse and when, just before his trip to Europe, he went to rest at Hyannisport, he sent for the White House physician, Dr. Janet Travell. She diagnosed the ailment as "a lumbosacral strain," treated the President with Novocain injections and hot packs. Out of public view, he used crutches to get about the big estate...
...spinal discs, a metal plate was inserted in his back. But the area became infected, and his condition, aggravated by his adrenal insufficiency (for which he still takes a cortisone derivative), brought him near death. In another operation, the plate was removed. Aided by Dr. Travell's Novocain treatments, Kennedy finally mended -and, during last year's campaign, his health was pronounced "excellent...
...Travell has concentrated on what doctors call muscle spasm and patients call muscle cramps. During most of her career, the main drug used to relieve these pains-often agonizing, sometimes crippling-has been procaine (Novocain), which has to be injected. Dr. Travell learned to make skillful use of the so far unexplained fact that the patient's relief from pain often lasts for weeks or months, though the procaine itself wears off in a few hours. She has treated herself and practically every member of her family, including her husband, Investment Counselor John Powell, who gets his pains...
...increasingly to bring the spasms back. By 1954 he was a cripple on crutches. He hobbled into New York's Hospital for Special Surgery. Doctors tried a delicate spinal fusion. It failed, and Kennedy contracted a near-fatal staphylococcus infection. Another operation four months later was successful, and novocain treatments broke the cycle of muscle spasms. The President still must wear a quarter-inch riser in the heel of his left shoes and sneakers, and a small brace to support his back muscles...
...emaciated that he looked like a death's head appeared later with plump cheeks. Obviously he had been well fed in the meantime, but Dr. Asian attributed his improvement to her regimen of giving thrice-weekly injections of procaine (better known by one of its trade names, Novocain). The applause for Dr. Asian was polite but weak...