Chapter 4: Summer in the Hospital

During the first days of summer vacation in 1949, Vincent and I were in the park racing our bicycles, playing Tour de France. Bicycling is a big sport in Belgium, and the Tour de France was being followed closely by the whole country.

I was trying to pass him on the inside of a gravel pathway, and my tires slipped on a tree root, throwing me against the tree and breaking my arm right above the elbow, in a clean break.

Vincent’s uncle, Dr. Appelmans, was a professor and chief of surgery at the hospital at the University of Louvain, so I was transported there. He put my arm in a cast and sent me back to my room.

Maybe three hours passed. The doctor was just ecstatic at how beautifully he had set the bone, like a puzzle. (Doctors, it seems to me, are always satisfied with their work.) But my hand had turned almost black. My father says to him, “You take that cast off, or I’ll take my hunting knife here and I’ll cut it off.” They removed the cast, but it was too late. It was not a split cast, and as my arm had swelled inside it, my hand became paralyzed. They barely managed to save my arm from gangrene.

My arm was put in traction via a rod through my elbow, which meant I had to lie on my back. Since I had an open wound along most of my lower arm, as a result of useless surgery, I was given penicillin to stave off infection. In those days penicillin had to be administered by injections, in three-hour intervals, around the clock, in the sides of the upper thighs. (Ever since that hospitalization, I have had a phobia about needles.)

They tried all sorts of torture methods to revive the nerves, but nothing worked. It was all dead.

I was well cared-for, especially because the doctor was trying to do everything he could to make amends. I was given a private room and had everything I needed. I was not in pain, or at least I don’t remember being in pain. My main concern was that I was bedridden. Because my arm was in traction, all my personal care had to be done in bed, which of course I wasn’t accustomed to. And this university hospital was not only Catholic, but Jesuit. All the orderlies were nuns, with their huge headgear. God knows why, but I used to call them penguins. (You can see how I became Jesuit-damaged.)

My parents were understandably upset. My father, always a bit of a pessimist in the best of circumstances, was especially fretful. He had just managed to escape Hungary, and now his son was bedridden. What would the future hold?

I was mostly annoyed because this happened at the very beginning of summer vacation. Nobody told me at the time that I would be left with a paralyzed hand, and I didn’t realize it myself until after they took my arm out of traction. But after four or five weeks, my hand was in a completely cramped position, and I had developed a so-called Volkmann’s contracture.

After the bone healed, my wound was sewn up, allowing the skin to heal. I was given all sorts of therapies, some of which were administered diligently by my poor mother. Electroshocks were applied to my arm to make the nerves and muscles jump, imitating motion. I wore special stretching devices to get my fingers unclenched, but as soon as the devices were removed, back my fingers went.

I was living in Brussels with my parents and brother at this time, and school had begun for the year. This was now the morning routine: My mother woke me up and applied electroshocks from a little machine. I was also given vitamin shots, particularly vitamin C and vitamin B, which hurt like hell. To make matters worse, my father administered the shots to save money. Needless to say, I didn’t look forward to any of this.

I did a stint at Bochum-Langendreer in Germany with a very famous neurosurgeon, Professor Tönis. He said, “There’s not much we can do, but let’s try a sympathectomy to increase the blood supply to my arm...

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