This continued after he got home, and by the morning of June 27th, he had much pain and fever. I at 10 a. na that morning carried him to the hospital at Camp Mackall to Capt. Reiff. He continued to grow worse and it was quickly evident that he had euremia—a poisoning from his kidneys. On July 6th he was transferred to the Regional hospital at Ft. Bragg, 40 miles distant with his NPN registering in the ‘eighties. The physicians tried to unstop the stone evidently blocking the ureter but could not; and so on July 16th Major Howard Mays operated on the left kidney and removed the stones. Barely six weeks later, he again operated, this time on the right kidney, which proved to be very small, or an infantile kidney, and removed stones.
Front Yard at Home Easter of 1943.
After these two operations he mended nicely, and was able to leave the hospital Oct. 27th, with his discharge.
He came home for a few days, then registered and entered the University at Chapel Hill on Nov. 1st, (1945), as a freshman.
He remained at the University until the end of the term June 5th, (1946), and came home. For much of that summer, he spent visiting around, and at the beach. On Aug. 20th he went to Blacksburg to visit Crawley Cash. But he felt feverish down there, and his side hurt him, so much so that he came home Aug. 27th. On Aug. 28th, at 6:30 a. m., I found he had temperature of 104. I at once called Walter King and he carried him to the Veterans hospital at Fayetteville. This vv as Aug. 28th, 1.546.
On Aug. 29th Dr. Emery Huth, noted Urologist at the VA, phoned me that it was imperative he operate, at once. He did so the afternoon of Aug. 29th, and it was quite a serious operation. Dr. Huth and Dr. Rachlin found that his left kidney was not only much enlarged, but badly abscessed ; the surgeons debated during the operation as to removing that affected kidney, but simply could not, because the right kidney was too small to sustain the body alone. So they removed the new stones in left kidney and sewed him up—and as. Dr. Huth told Betty and me right after the operation, “we have done all that surgery can do—the rest is in the hands of God.”
For a week he appeared to be getting better, and was, but just one week after the operation, on Thursday night, Sept. 5th, the abscesses in his kidney perhaps sloughed into a vein, for a terrific hemorrhage developed and for two hours the boy was at the point of death. I was phoned, and Billy Everett and I got there by midnight;
