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Pope John Paul shunned medical treatment-book

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 10:32 CST

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.

Source: REUTERS

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