Pope John Paul shunned medical treatment-book

By Silvia Aloisi

ROME (Reuters) – Pope John Paul II often played down his
ailments and was reluctant to receive medical treatment,
according to a book by some of his closest aides, including his
personal physician.

Excerpts of the book, published by Italian newspapers on
Wednesday, also show the Vatican knew the late Pope had the
symptoms of Parkinson’s disease since 1991, but kept quiet
about it for five years.

The book, whose title “Let Me Go” is drawn from the
pontiff’s last words before dying last April 2, includes a
detailed account of the Pope’s medical history by his longtime
doctor, Renato Buzzonetti.

Buzzonetti said the Pope, who in 1992 underwent surgery to
remove a large intestinal tumor that was starting to turn
malignant, had kept silent about his symptoms and pain for
months and initially refused an emergency procedure recommended
by his doctors.

He had already had a major abdominal operation in 1981
after an assassination attempt.

In 1994, when the Pope slipped in his bath at the Vatican
and broke his right thigh bone, his aides had to convince him
to cancel a trip to Sicily scheduled for the next day.

Two years later, the Pope’s reluctance to undergo surgery
again as well as his many engagements meant the removal of his
inflamed appendix, which had caused him recurring fever and
abdominal pain, had to be “continuously postponed.”

Also in 1996, during a papal visit to Hungary in which John
Paul appeared fatigued, a Vatican spokesman said for the first
time that the Pope was suffering from a “extrapyramidal
neurological disorder.” The Vatican officially acknowledged it
was Parkinson’s disease only in 2003.

FINAL DAYS

Buzzonetti also gives a graphically descriptive, behind-the
scenes chronicle of the Pope’s final days, hours and minutes.
Most details had already been published by the Vatican, in an
act of unusual transparency, last September.

The Pope was hospitalized for two periods in February and
March of 2005. During his second stay, he underwent a
tracheotomy and had a tube fitted in his throat to help him
breathe.

Buzzonetti recounts how on March 31, three days before his
death, the ailing Pope was attending mass in his chapel when he
felt a “sudden chill and violent shaking.”

His temperature quickly rose to nearly 40 degrees Celsius
(104 Fahrenheit). He suffered septic shock caused by an
infection of the urinary tract and cardio-circulatory collapse.

Still, he asked to remain in his Vatican residence, where a
full-time team of doctors were attending him, rather than
return to hospital.

The next morning, the Pope was “conscious and serene” at a
6 a.m. mass in his bedroom.

He started slipping in and out of consciousness at about
7:30 a.m. of April 2, the day he died. Later in the day he
muttered his last comprehensible words in Polish (“Let me go to
the house of the Father”) before entering a coma and dying at
9:37 p.m.

The book was due to hit the stands later on Wednesday.