Control of such hemorrhage involved removal of the injured kidney, in
order to tie off the vessels supplying it with blood. This in turn would
mean the cutting of ribs to make room for the requisite mechanics of
kidney removal. Such an operation on a patient already in shock from a
bullet wound and from the major abdominal surgery which followed, would,
it was agreed by all, inevitably bring about the patient’s death. All
that remained was to hope for a miracle--and none manifested itself. In
the words of Dr. Cecil Lorio:
“The patient never really recovered consciousness. He was in shock, and
under sedation, until he died. As the day [Monday] wore on, and Huey’s
blood pressure continued to fall, a transfusion was ordered. It may have
been earlier that the transfusion was given. The hospital records would
show.”
Unfortunately, the hospital record shows only one transfusion, given at
8:15 Monday night, nearly twenty-four hours after the shooting. However,
it must be borne in mind that in those days, long before blood and
plasma banks had been established as standard hospital facilities,
transfusions were by no means the routine procedure they are today. In
the case of Huey Long, a chart note signed by Dr. Roy Theriot records
the fact that five hundred cubic centimeters of citrated blood were
given, that before transfusion approximately three hundred cubic
centimeters of normal saline solution were given intravenously at a
time when the pulse was very thready, and that the transfusion was
followed by a continuous intravenous drip of glucose in normal saline.
Even after this the patient’s blood pressure was only 114 over 84, while
the pulse rate was still a frightening “170-plus.”
Almost as soon as Senator Long had been brought to the hospital,
volunteer blood donors were typed, and their blood cross-matched with
that of the patient. According to the laboratory report incorporated in
the hospital chart, J. A. Vitiano, Eddie Knoblock, Colonel Rougon, J. R.
Pollett, M. E. Bird, George Castigliola, and Paul Voitier were marked
“incompatible”; C. J. Campbell, John Kirsch, “no name,” Joe Bates,
Senator Noe, Bill Melton, and a Mr. Walker were found to be compatible.
In addition, “no name,” Bates, Noe, and Melton were also marked with an
“O.K.”
Senator Noe was the first and apparently only donor, and it is my
recollection that we met in the Heidelberg Hotel elevator Monday night
when he told me he had “just given blood to Huey.” Mrs. Noe was with him
at the time, said she was sure Senator Long would recover, and expressed
the hope that future installments of the _Saturday Evening Post’s_
biographical portrait would “do him proud.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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