Dr. Feelgood Read Online Free Page B

eyes.” 7
    After taking the phone call from Chuck Spalding, Jacobson became anxious. A promised relationship with a politically prominent patient was as mysterious as it was exciting. Late that same afternoon, the senator showed up. The office, which was usually jam-packed with celebrity patients such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Alan Jay Lerner, and Anthony Quinn, was now deserted. Jacobson had cleared all of them out.
    Just as Spalding had promised to his former roommate, the doctor was gracious, but he stared at the young Democratic presidential candidate through the eyes of a physician as well a civilian basking in the glow of the senator’s charismatic presence. Jacobson stared long and hard because he believed that by looking directly into someone’s eyes, he could learn everything there was to learn about the person. He was impressed by Kennedy’s earnestness and what he perceived to be the candidate’s clarity. He noted every aspect of Kennedy’s physical condition even before they spoke. In his own records, Jacobson remembered JFK as especially thin, with long fatigue lines in his face and sagging cheeks.
    The candidate said that he had given the slip to his security personnel because, as he made clear, he wanted complete anonymity. Jacobson reassured him that he would absolutely keep all their conversations confidential.
    Although Senator Kennedy tried to be affable as he stood uncomfortably in Jacobson’s office, the doctor could tell he was put off by the cramped space and Jacobson’s disheveled appearance. To break the tension, Kennedy began by making small talk about Mark Shaw, who had just been put on a special assignment to photograph Kennedy and his family. Kennedy said that both Shaw and Chuck Spalding had spoken very highly of Jacobson’s medical procedures, which had helped them overcome the intense strain of their professions. Both of them had recommended that Kennedy pay Jacobson a visit after a brutal primary campaign against senators Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson that left him in need of a jumpstart now that the general election campaign was in full swing.
    What was Kennedy’s medical complaint? Jacobson, ever the skilled diagnostician, asked this while peering at his new patient. It was the demands of the campaign, Kennedy explained. It was draining him. He was fatigued. His muscles felt weak. And this weakness was interfering with his concentration and his speech. Worse, he was getting laryngitis. He was looking ahead to a series of televised debates with his opponent, Vice President Nixon—a fierce and seasoned debater, a street fighter who was known to go after his opponents’ jugulars. Kennedy was worried, and the strain was taking its toll. Even though they had been friends and colleagues in the United States Senate, Kennedy had no illusions about how Nixon would go after him in the debates.
    Jacobson was not at all surprised by Kennedy’s description of his physical problems. The senator’s complaints, however, constituted the most common symptoms of stress, which, in Jacobson’s opinion, if not addressed, would only become more severe. He took a short case history, asking the presidential candidate about any previous diseases he had contracted, accidents or injuries from the war, and treatments he had been given. JFK started by describing his Addison’s disease, and how it resulted in extreme weakness, fluctuations in blood pressure, and chronic diarrhea and nausea, among other symptoms. Kennedy also told the doctor about the chronic and often acute back pain that had resulted from injuries he had incurred while commanding a badly damaged and sinking PT boat in the South Pacific in World War II. Kennedy, who had suffered bone loss and was taking more than a few hot showers a day as a kind of hydrotherapy, was almost crippled by the pain. He wasn’t wheelchair-bound, as Franklin Roosevelt had been after he contracted polio, but he needed medication just to be able