Medically Incurable by Walter Bennett Walter and Naurine Bennett live on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, southwest of Los Angeles. Both hold Master’s Degrees from the University of Southern California. Mr. Bennett is a real estate broker with offices on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Mrs. Bennett is Assistant Principal at Leuzinger High School in Centinela Valley and Dean of the Fine Arts Department. In 1966, she won the Woman of the Year award from the Fine Arts Association of Centinela Valley for furthering art and culture. Naurine and I were what you might call typical Baptists. Back in my home town of Paducah, Kentucky, if you were not a Baptist, you just did not count. So when I married Naurine, who was a United Brethren from Sumner, Illinois (a small town in Lawrence County), I told her she had to become a Baptist, too. “After all,” I kidded her, “you want to get to heaven, don’t you?” We moved to California in 1947 and later we both enrolled at USC to obtain our Master’s Degrees. I taught in the public school for twelve years before going into the real estate business in Los Angeles. Naurine went into public school administration and has been at the same school for nineteen years. Since we were always active church members, we joined a local Baptist church. However, since Naurine’s healing ... but I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to two days after Thanksgiving in 1954. I had gotten up early and was in the bathroom shaving when I heard Naurine cry out. I thought she was kidding and sauntered back into the bedroom and jokingly said something about the holidays and old age. Then I saw she was not kidding. Her face was blanched white and her mouth drawn in intense pain. “It’s my hip.” she gasped, “Something is wrong....” I tried to get her on her feet, but she cried out in pain and fell back on the bed, unable to stand. I straightened her out on the bed and picked up the phone and called our family physician. “Bring her to my office,” he said. Thirty minutes later, I helped Naurine from the car into the doctor’s office. She was unable to stand on her left leg and spoke of excruciating pain in her hip. The doctor examined her and shook his head. “I do not think it is organic,” he said. “We need to get her to a specialist.” I agreed, and the doctor called an orthopedic surgeon. We were instructed to meet him at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood immediately. X-rays showed the hip joint was full of fluid, which had forced the hip out of its socket. The orthopedist took Naurine into surgery, where he inserted a long needle into the back of the joint in an effort to withdraw the fluid. This was unsuccessful, so he tried again from the front. Again, he was unable to withdraw any fluid. The next procedure followed was to put her left leg in heavy traction — and wait. She remained in traction for three weeks. Every time the weights were removed, the intense pain returned. By that time, the pain was no longer localized in the hip but had spread throughout her body. Besides that, the doctors discovered a large distension in the lower abdominal area as it seemingly filled up with fluid. Her whole system was rapidly becoming affected. The orthopedist called our own doctor back on the case and indicated he had no success with his treatment. Perhaps, he suggested, the disease was organic after all. Various drugs and medicines were applied, but there was no progress. As a matter of fact, she kept regressing steadily. A few days before Christmas, I asked the doctors if I could bring her home for the holidays. They agreed and I took her home. She remained unable to get out of bed and the day after New Year’s, I came home from school and found her doubled over in pain. “I have a terrific pulling sensation,” she cried as she twisted on the bed, holding her sides. I phoned the doctor and he said I should get her back in the hospital as soon as possible. This time, she was running a high fever, her blood pressure had dropped to a dangerous level, and the pain had spread throughout her entire body. A team of doctors helped with the examination and tests which indicated there was a general hardening of all the outer tissue on all the internal organs of the body. The same condition was detected in the epidermis of her body, also. After ten days in the old Methodist Hospital in Los Angeles, our family physician called me into his office. “Walter, there is every evidence that Naurine has a rare disease known as lupus.” He paused while I tried to comprehend what he had said. “I do not quite know how to say this,” he said, dropping his head, “but I know you are both Christians and have a different outlook on life than some of the others I treat. Still....” His voice trailed off and I felt my heart leap into my throat. “There is just no easy way to say this, Walter,” he continued. “The disease is incurable and if we are right in our diagnosis, she will probably never leave the hospital alive.” He had said it. Yet I could not believe my ears. “Incurable ... never leave the hospital....” “No!” I choked out, trying to pull myself to my feet, yet feeling my legs collapse under me. “You have to be wrong.” The doctor came around the desk, where I sat shaking with fear. He put his hand on my shoulder and spoke softly, “Walter, there is a slight chance we are wrong. And we have more tests to run. Maybe they will turn up something different. But your wife is a mighty sick girl and if it is what we think it is, there is just nothing much medical science can do about it.” They did do more tests. They did a biopsy on her thigh, taking a sample of bone, tendon, and several layers of skin and muscle tissue. These were tested by the pathologist who sent his report back to our doctor. The first week in February, the doctor called me back into his office. “Walter, I told you we might be wrong on that first diagnosis. Now it seems that we were. We have positively identified Naurine’s condition as scleroderma.” I had the definite feeling that he was trying to let me down easily, give me hope when he knew there was no hope. “What is scleroderma?” I asked. “It affects the vital organs of the body,” he said. “The skin tissues of these organs begin to harden.” “You said the vital organs?” I said, my mouth dry. “Do you mean her heart as well?” “Yes, her heart, kidneys, liver, and lungs. The coverings on all these organs will get progressively harder and less pliable. This will mean intense pain in every area of the body, but we can give her some comfort....” He paused as if unwilling to continue. “What is the prognosis?” I whispered, deathly afraid of his answer. “You said lupus was fatal. What about scleroderma?” The doctor got up from his chair and walked to the window, his back toward me. “Scleroderma is medically incurable, also. It might take a little longer to run its course, but if the medication does its job, she ought to live at least three years.” Again he paused and then added, as if talking to himself, “If she can stand the pain that long.” “Three years? My God, I cannot stand this.” My thoughts were frantically screaming why, why, why? We had been good people. We belonged to a church. We tithed our income. We were active in the Lord’s work. We did not smoke or drink. We prayed and read our Bible. Why would God let this happen to Naurine? The doctor continued looking out the window. I sensed his deep feeling of inadequacy, not only in the face of this medically incurable disease, but in the face of my intense silence. He did not have any answer. Nor did anyone else seem to have the answer. The next day, the internist and our doctor came by Naurine’s room while I was sitting with her. “Mr. Bennett, there is a research program under way in New York that has shown some results in drug use to retard this disease. It is not a cure and is still in the experimental stage. As a matter of fact, we will have to have your permission to use the drug. However, as it stands now, we have no place else to turn, and I strongly advise you to give us permission to start this treatment at once.” I glanced at Naurine. Her face was twitching in pain and her body trembled. “Yes,” I said, “do whatever you can and do it fast. I do not think she can stand much more of this.” The doctor called New York that morning and the new medication was put on a plane for Los Angeles. Treatment began at midnight. The new drug was mixed with glucose to be given intravenously, and drop by drop, it was assimilated by her diseased system. From the very outset, there was marked improvement in Naurine’s condition. At the end of the twenty-seven day period, the intravenous dosage was complete and a comparable medication was administered by mouth. By the middle of April, she had improved enough that the doctor said I could take her home. The first hospitalization of almost four months was to be, however, only the first of many over the ensuing years. Naurine’s improved condition did not last. Every new medication that came our way was tried, but none appeared to help. She was regressing to her original condition and pain. In desperation, I wrote Mayo Clinic. The physician who replied stated that as there was no definite cure for scleroderma, the only suggestion he could offer was to follow the direction of my own physician. In other words, Mayo said it was hopeless, also. Naurine had been unable to work for fifteen months. However, the doctor said that inactivity would shorten her life quicker than anything else. She had to keep moving. She had to keep exercising. If not, her muscles would become rigid and she would become bedridden. Therefore, the doctor suggested that she go back to work for two hours a day. A daily injection became necessary. As the months passed, she began to take the shots at home along with a total of fifty-three pills a day. We knew her heart was being affected — shooting pains flashed down her arms much like those in a heart attack. Kidneys, lungs, eyes, and the skin of her body were becoming more and more affected. Naurine tried working on a two-hour-a-day basis and increased to a four-hour day after a few months. By September, 1956, almost two years after her first symptoms, she was able to force herself to work a full eight-hour schedule, even though the pain was almost unbearable. “Keep pushing yourself,” the doctor said. “Do not give up, for if you give up, your condition will worsen. You have to keep going.” I realized this and made her get up each morning to get to work. It was a horrible ordeal, for after a night’s sleep, the pain in her stiffened muscles was excruciating. The tension mounted. I knew I had to force her, yet I felt like a heel doing it. “I just cannot go on,” she would say. But I loved her enough to force her to keep pushing. The pain grew worse, just as the doctors had said it would. They changed her medicine and put her on three different cortisone derivatives, as well as other prescribed medications as research on the disease released new medication. The daily shots continued, or if she missed one, a double dose the following day. She had outlived her three years and for that, we were thankful. She had been hospitalized at least twice a year, but she was still going. But it was becoming tougher and tougher each week. At times her muscles would go into spasms and her toes would draw back under her feet and sometimes lock in that position, requiring much massaging to get them to return to normal position. Any exposure to sunlight or heat caused intense pain and accumulation of fluid. Cold baths were all she could stand and as the months staggered past, I had to pack her legs in ice so she could get relief enough to sleep at night. Conservatively speaking, we had spent close to thirty thousand dollars for medical treatment. Our check stubs showed we had spent more than nineteen thousand dollars for drugs alone over the eleven-year period. She was determined, by this time, to push on. The one thing she was not going to become was an invalid. “I may die on my feet, but I will not be confined to bed,” she said stubbornly. God knows how much I admired her spunk and fighting spirit, for there were times when I saw her climbing steps that caused such pain in her muscles that the tears splashed on her clothes. But she kept going. Always before her was the specter of a bedridden life due to rigidity of muscles and organs, so she gritted her teeth and struggled on. Even when sitting, she was moving her arms and legs, neck and head, even fingers and toes — always moving. In November, 1965, eleven years after the first attack, Naurine was hospitalized for the last time. Large, liver-colored spots had begun to appear on her legs and hips, two to three inches in diameter. The doctors did a series of tests and said the disease had reached its final stage of progression. There was nothing medically they could do any more except wait for the end. But the end was much different than the doctors predicted. On December 15, a Lutheran friend called to ”tell Naurine about a new book she had just discovered: I Believe in Miracles. She was going to bring it by the house for us to read. We read it together. Spiritual healing had just never been my cup of tea. As a matter of fact, we had never been to a miracle service in our entire lives. Surely/as a Bible-believing Baptist, I believed that God could heal sick bodies. The difference was that I had never believed that God actually did it today. Healing today is done by the doctors and hospitals, I had thought. We had not been taught about the healing ministry of the Holy Spirit. But now I was suddenly confronted with the possibility that God still worked miracles — bypassing regular means, at times, to perform healing himself. “Could it actually be true?” we wondered out loud. We were soon to find out. After Christmas, which we both thought would be Naurine’s last, her Lutheran friend called again. Miss Kuhlman would be speaking at the Shrine Auditorium on January 23. She asked Naurine to go with her. I had been in bed with a bad case of flu, but decided that we should both go. So we skipped church and drove across town to attend the miracle service, taking our Lutheran friend and two other ladies with us. We had been warned to arrive early and were glad we did. The doors did not open that Sunday until 1P.M., but when we arrived at 10:30 A.M., there were at least a thousand people already crowded around the huge portico outside the auditorium. We wedged ourselves as close to the door as possible. Our Lutheran friend, knowing the situation, had advised us to take a camp stool for Naurine. After she sat down, the four of us formed a little circle around her, holding hands, to keep the crowd from pressing against her pain-wracked body. At one o’clock, the doors opened and we were swept into the building ahead of the almost stampeding mass of humanity. We finally found seats on the main floor about halfway down in the center of the auditorium. I glanced at Naurine. Her face was pale from pain. Her body was quivering with the characteristic mannerisms she had developed to keep all the muscles moving. She constantly crossed and recrossed her legs, moved her arms, and wiggled her fingers. “Are you all right?” I whispered. She gave me a smile and nodded her head. We were skeptical, to say the least. As the meeting got underway and I saw people coming to the platform claiming they had been healed of various maladies, my skepticism grew worse, until a strange thing happened which I could not doubt. Sitting next to me was a woman who had been wheezing badly from asthma. Earlier, she had asked me to help her out if her wheezing got too bad. About halfway through the service, the woman suddenly began to tremble and stood to her feet, clutching her throat. I thought she was having an attack and started to stand to help her when I realized she was crying. “I have been healed,” she said, looking at me. “I can breathe. I am not wheezing anymore. Something has happened in my chest.” Her voice rose in excitement as she repeatedly said, “I am healed. I am healed.” One of the workers hurried down the side and took the woman to the platform to share her testimony. I could hardly believe it and knew that my eyes were as round as saucers. I slumped back down in my seat in stunned silence. “What is going on here?” I asked Naurine. “Did you see that?” I began to pray, “Dear God, if You really do heal people today, please heal Naurine. Touch her body and heal her.” It was a pretty weak prayer, but it was all I could choke out. Still, nothing happened. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost 5 P.M. We had been there six and a half hours. I knew the service was drawing to a close. “I guess nothing is going to happen after all,” I murmured to myself. Just then, Miss Kuhlman left the line of those who had come forward to testify of their healings and walked back to the center microphone. She said, “The presence of the Holy Spirit is so great in this auditorium at this moment that anyone can receive anything he desires from the Lord by just reaching up and receiving it from Him. Sing with me.” And the choir and congregation burst into song with the words and music of He Touched Me. I turned and looked at Naurine. Her face was uplifted toward heaven and she had both hands extended above her head, palms up, as if she were waiting to receive something from God himself. And then she did. The countenance on her face changed as if there were a heavenly light glowing around her head and shoulders. Her eyes filled with tears and an almost angelic smile came to her lips. Her body began to tremble. It started with the top of her head in what she later described as a tremendous, but painless, jolt of electricity. Her whole body was quivering and suddenly her head was thrown forward to her knees in what I thought was a giant spasm. I could hear Miss Kuhlman’s voice above the singing, “Someone in this center section, right down here, has just been healed of a rare skin disease. Where is that person?” I sensed that Naurine was trying to stand, but she was still shaking violently. Her whole muscular and nervous system seemed to be taking its commands from some other circuit than her brain waves. She kept trying to stand but could not. Four times Miss Kuhlman called out for the person to stand before Naurine finally straightened to her feet. She was the one. She had been healed. “Honey, did you faint?” I asked her. She looked at me with wide eyes as she held onto the back of the seat in front of her. She was swaying and I was afraid she would fall. “I don’t know what has happened to me; but the pain ... the pain is gone. Walter! The pain is gone,” she said with joy and unbelief. “I don’t hurt anymore.” She fell back into her seat under what I now know was the power of God. An usher who had been attending our section, a man whom we later discovered was a Presbyterian elder, approached us and asked us to step out into the aisle. Between the two of us, we helped Naurine to her feet and to the stage. She was coherent but reeling and staggering like a drunken person. She had been healed, totally and completely! Immediately, things began to happen. Naurine stopped taking her medicine. All fifty-three pills and the daily shot were left behind. I knew from my limited medical background that if the cortisone drugs were withdrawn without tapering off that the patient would usually go into a coma. However, Naurine was insistent that God had purged her body of all traces of the disease and drugs and refused to take a single pill. She has never taken a pill since that day. Neither of us slept during the next three days. It was as if we were living in a dream world. We were both so excited over what had taken place that when night came we turned on all the lights and stayed up, talking and listening to the stereo and praising God. A very odd thing was taking place, too. During this three day period of time, Naurine’s body was extremely warm, almost hot. She had no apparent fever, but the skin over her entire body felt like a warm light bulb, almost too hot to touch. At the end of the third day, it went away and she felt her body returning to its normal temperature. That night, we both fell into bed exhausted and slept around the clock. Within a week, she called her doctor for an appointment. He asked her to go to the clinic for laboratory tests. He would have his nurse set up an appointment for her examination when he received the results of her tests. She had not even so much as hinted that she had been healed. She wanted to surprise him. She did. On February 22, the doctor called and asked us both to come to his office. His nurse asked me to wait in his waiting room while he examined Naurine. After the examination, he sat back on his stool near the examining table and said, “All right, Mrs. Bennett, tell me what happened.” “What do you mean?” she asked, trying to hold back her smiles. “You know what I mean. Something has happened. When I examined you just now, I found no symptoms of scleroderma in your body. And besides,” he said, opening her huge medical folder, “these last tests from the lab are all negative. Now tell me what happened.” Naurine asked, “Do you believe in miracles?” “Yes, I do,” he said. “I have seen too much happen that cannot be explained scientifically to discredit the power of God.” She then related what had taken place. He just sat there and listened. When she had finished, he said, “What about your medicine?” “I’ve stopped it,” she said. “Even the cortisone?” “Four weeks ago — on the day of my healing,” she said, with a firm smile on her face. “I see,” he mused. “When you finish dressing, you may wait in the outer room. I will be out shortly.” He left the examination room and came directly to his waiting room where I was sitting and invited me into his office. “I have just finished examining your wife, Walter. Maybe you can tell me what has happened to her,” he said casually. Not knowing that Naurine had just told him the complete story, I started at the beginning and gave him the full account of the miracle service. When I finished he sat silently behind his desk for a brief moment. “What about the drugs?” he said. “She is still taking her cortisone, isn’t she?” “Oh, no,” I answered, “she stopped that along with all the other drugs four weeks ago—the day of her healing.” He declared that Naurine’s healing could be classified under one category only: miracle. He added, “Do not try to explain it—just accept it and live a normal life.” We have not missed a Kathryn Kuhlman service at the Shrine since that time. We still are and probably always will be Baptists. But I do not think that anyone will ever again tag us as “typical.” “Comrade” with Christ: Chapter 18 |