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Vet's duty: Stay active

Navy veteran Harold Summers survived three wars. Now he keeps up the good fight against total paralysis.

By KAREN DAVISON
Published May 29, 2005

UNIVERSITY AREA - Harold Summers is a member of an exclusive club - a survivor of three wars.

In World War II, he saw his first combat on Omaha Beach at age 19. His feet got frostbitten in Korea. He was wounded twice in Vietnam.

So he never thought he'd have to depend on others for nearly everything, as he does at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center's nursing home on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

Life served up a twist of irony when he woke up paralyzed 15 years ago. But once again, he's a survivor. These days the 80-year-old maneuvers his wheelchair down N 22nd Street's sidewalks to visit his wife's apartment.

"I had a choice of just laying down and dying," he said. His determination and a wife who has always been there for him pulled him through.

On a Sunday in August 1990, Summers woke at 4 a.m. and couldn't move his arms or legs. He could feel them. He could think and talk. He just couldn't get up.

What could this be? He ran through the possibilities: Another heart attack? A stroke?

He couldn't get a full breath. This reminded him of Vietnam after he burned uniforms soaked in Agent Orange and breathed in the smoke.

His wife lay beside him in their home in Deltona. How was he going to tell her? He let her sleep.

When she woke she tried to help him up, but 200 pounds of dead weight proved too heavy for her. Breathing became difficult for him. She called an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and followed in her car.

It wasn't the first time Patria Summers followed Harold. When they met in 1945, he was a 21-year-old Navy corpsman stationed in Puerto Rico, already a veteran of World War II; she was 22 and sassy. She scolded him for being out of uniform. Then she went home and told her sisters she was going to marry him.

She had signed on as a Navy wife.

Harold Summers was transferred often in his years of service. Though they were poor, Patria managed to save a few dollars until the end of the month. She shared them with other wives who needed money.

"Everybody was broke," she said. "What we had was love for the Navy."

Once he retired, the couple thought their frequent moves were behind them. But it all started again in 1990 when he woke up paralyzed.

At the hospital in Deltona, he needed a tracheotomy. The doctors cut an opening through his throat and inserted a tube to hook him to a ventilator. He couldn't talk for the rest of his two-month stay.

His wife stayed by his side, trying to make sense of his condition. Their three sons visited from New Jersey and Maine.

He developed sensitive hearing and could hear nurses talking at their desk about how he wouldn't be around in the morning.

At the end of two months, he sported a painful bedsore, had lost weight and couldn't shake pneumonia. If anything, the paralysis had worsened, and he breathed only with the help of a ventilator.

The doctors diagnosed Guillain-Barre syndrome, an inflammatory disorder of the peripheral nerves, those outside the brain and spinal cord. It is characterized by the rapid onset of weakness and, often, paralysis of the legs, arms, breathing muscles and face, according to the Web site of the Guillain-Barre/CIDP Syndrome Foundation. GBS is the most common cause of rapidly acquired paralysis in the United States today, affecting one to two people in every 100,000, says the site. Summers was shipped by ambulance across the state to a chronic care facility in Tampa. He remembers the trip on Interstate 4 seemed to take all day. He didn't know what to expect.

Forty-six years earlier, on another trip, Summers didn't know what to expect either. But he was worried as he headed for Omaha Beach on D-day.

The LST (landing ship/tank) transporting him and his fellow soldiers pulled onto shore as planned. Then it backed up. The back end blew off, taking the engine room and crew's compartment with it. He got out through the LST's open door and waded 150 feet to shore. Other men jumped overboard into the shallow water. Some died on the ship.

That was the first combat Summers had ever seen. He was 19.

"At first you're so scared you don't know if you should run and hide. I was scared to death," he said. "I've always had the ability to not panic until it's over. I didn't get scared enough to panic - just scared enough to keep my head down."

He helped the Army care for the wounded for four or five days until he was assigned to a ship that carried casualties back to England. They arranged litters three-high, bunk-bed style. As a corpsman, the Navy equivalent of a medic, Summers applied bandages and performed minor surgeries like removing shrapnel.

"You'd think how lucky you were, not how bad it was," he said.

After his ambulance trip across Florida to the chronic care facility in Tampa, Summers didn't feel so lucky. In his two months there, he occupied a couple of different rooms. He remembers one with mottled walls and an air conditioner that ran just half the time. He figured the nurses' station had to be far away because it took them so long to reach him.

At least once a day and twice a night, he heard the alarm on his ventilator go off. He knew what that meant: the machine that breathed for him had stopped working. Someone had to check it for a malfunction. He couldn't move. His vision would get fuzzy and fade to black.

Then, after the staff fixed the ventilator - bang! He'd regain consciousness with intense sensations of a big noise and a flash of light.

He kept losing weight. His bedsore grew to the size of a 50-cent piece, but "felt like the size of a bushel basket." Once, Patria found him covered in ants.

He still couldn't talk because of the trach. At one point, an administrator brought in a lip reader who interpreted what he said word for word.

"Honey, get me the hell out of here. They're going to kill me," he said.

Patria did everything she could to get him transferred to the Haley VA hospital. But Operation Desert Shield was on, so it was tough getting admitted. Finally, a VA physician was able to help.

During his career as a Navy corpsman, Summers transported and treated the sick and wounded.

He had been at sea for a year when he was assigned to the 1st Marine Division in Korea, which meant working at the front lines. He lived in a tent in freezing weather. Wet mud kept his feet damp.

He sprayed or dusted prisoners and incoming Marines with DDT to kill fleas and lice. He remembers the metallic flavor.

He moved the wounded on buses. On one run, he picked up the wounded from a battalion at the Chosin Reservoir and headed for Seoul. That was the day 80 percent of the battalion was overrun. His guardian angel had looked out for him again.

Once Summers was at the VA hospital, doctors asked if he wanted to get off the ventilator. They plugged the opening in his neck, so he could answer "hell, yes." They weaned him from the machine, cured his bedsore and eventually conquered his pneumonia.

Summers thinks the VA and bullheadedness saved his life.

"I wouldn't have lived another month," he said. After about seven months, he moved next door to the VA nursing home.

The VA doctors agreed with the Guillain-Barre diagnosis, which Summers disputes. He thinks his paralysis is related to chemicals. A month before that August Sunday in 1990, he took a one-week hands-on course in pesticides. And there was the DDT and Agent Orange. Over the years, he and his wife have written to experts and questioned doctors. They have given up asking for a new diagnosis.

Summers hadn't planned on going to Vietnam.

Still, corpsmen were valuable commodities, and since he was in the fleet reserve, the government requested his services. He joined the 3rd Marine Division for his 14-month tour in the northern third of South Vietnam.

Was he at the front lines?

"You didn't know where the front lines were," he said. "You were never safe. Even in the half-mile from the base to the PX, kids (Marines) were killed."

He worked with doctors and nurses to triage and stabilize the wounded who came in soaked in Agent Orange, containing the highly toxic chemical dioxin. Summers often took over the job of burning the uniforms. He wore gloves but breathed in the smoke. His throat felt tight, and he had problems breathing afterward.

They shipped out wounded every night on a C-130 transport plane. Summers was wounded twice, both times on a runway. The first time a mortar exploded. The second time, shrapnel tore through his flak jacket and ripped into his right shoulder.

Summers, now 80, begins his days at 4 a.m. The staff at the VA nursing home uses a lift to move him from his bed to his electric wheelchair.

He patrols the inside corridors and the outside perimeter of the 180-bed home, his left hand operating the joystick that maneuvers the wheelchair. He knows every way in or out of the property, every locked gate, every side door. He knows the location of every tree limb he can use to scratch his face.

About 10 a.m., earlier on weekends, he's off to see Patria, now 81. She lives in a modest apartment on N 22nd Street, one of more than 10 places she has lived since coming to Tampa. Sticking mostly to sidewalks, he covers the eight-tenths of a mile in about 15 minutes, depending on traffic.

They help each other. "He is my support. I consult everything with him now," she said.

He reminds her of things she has forgotten and motors to Wal-Mart or University Mall to shop for her. She gets up from her chair "about 50 times" when he's at her apartment to act as his arms.

After lunch weekdays, he motors back to the VA for therapy to build his muscles and keep his joints limber. Twice a week in therapy, using braces to keep his knees stiff and initiating the movement from his hips, he walks.

He is lifted into bed before 4 p.m. A black "WWII-Korea-Vietnam Veteran" ballcap his wife bought him hangs on the bed frame above him. After supper, television. He's asleep by 10 p.m. under a sheet that reads "Department of Veterans Affairs Property - Not for Sale."

[Last modified May 29, 2005, 01:05:19]