“Dr. Maes and I were taken into a room next to the one Huey was in,” he related, “and there I stopped. Dr. Maes was taken on into the patient’s room, while I got off into a corner, making myself inconspicuous. At this time there was still no suggestion that anyone but Dr. Weiss had shot or even could have shot Huey Long. Meanwhile, people were going in and out of the sickroom, apparently at will. I did not know many of them, and certainly most of them were not physicians. Finally someone, and I think it was Abe Shushan, asked me had I been in the room where Huey was, and I said no, I was only there to assist Dr. Maes in the event there was any surgery he had to perform. He said: ‘In something like this we want the benefit of every doctor’s advice,’ and led me in there.
“I did not see the wound of entrance, and I was told by one of the nuns or one of the nurses that the wound of entrance was beneath the clean dressing on his belly; and from the location of this dressing it was clear to me that there was a good chance the bullet might have hit a kidney.
“I asked the nurses if there were any blood in his urine. That was the only contribution I could make. Whoever it was, she said she did not know. I said that if they did not know, he ought to be catheterized at once. Later that night, some time before I left for New Orleans, I was told he had been catheterized and that there was blood in his urine. That was an absolute indication of injury to the kidney. It was not necessarily a critical injury, or a hemorrhage that would not stop. But it did mean that there was an injury, and that if hemorrhage continued, that was the place to look for it.”
Dr. Maes said there would be no further surgery, and hence while he would stay through the day, Monday, there would be no need for Dr. Rives to do so. The latter thereupon drove back to New Orleans.
According to Dr. Loria’s monograph, the “postoperative course of the case continued steadily on the downgrade. Evidence of shock and hemorrhage appeared to become steadily worse ... the urine was found to contain much blood. At this time [Dr. Russell] Stone’s opinion was that another operation to arrest the kidney hemorrhage would certainly prove fatal....”
Whether it was Dr. Rives or Dr. Stone who first suggested catheterization is immaterial. The fact remains that until one or the other of these physicians, neither of whom was directly connected with the case, proposed this procedure, nothing of the sort seems to have been done; according to the progress notes on the microfilm chart, it was not done until 6:45 A.M., almost nine hours after the shooting, and six hours after the emergency operation had precluded the possibility of further surgery. Even after it was discovered that the kidney hemorrhage was massive and continuing, medical opinion was unanimous on the point that additional surgery would unquestionably prove fatal.
Control of such hemorrhage involved removal of the injured kidney, in order to tie off the vessels supplying it with blood. This in turn would mean the cutting of ribs to make room for the requisite mechanics of kidney removal. Such an operation on a patient already in shock from a bullet wound and from the major abdominal surgery which followed, would, it was agreed by all, inevitably bring about the patient’s death. All that remained was to hope for a miracle—and none manifested itself. In the words of Dr. Cecil Lorio:
“The patient never really recovered consciousness. He was in shock, and under sedation, until he died. As the day [Monday] wore on, and Huey’s blood pressure continued to fall, a transfusion was ordered. It may have been earlier that the transfusion was given. The hospital records would show.”
Unfortunately, the hospital record shows only one transfusion, given at 8:15 Monday night, nearly twenty-four hours after the shooting. However, it must be borne in mind that in those days, long before blood and plasma banks had been established as standard hospital facilities, transfusions were by no means the routine procedure they are today. In the case of Huey Long, a chart note signed by Dr. Roy Theriot records the fact that five hundred cubic centimeters of citrated blood were given, that before transfusion approximately three hundred cubic centimeters of normal saline solution were given intravenously at a time when the pulse was very thready, and that the transfusion was followed by a continuous intravenous drip of glucose in normal saline. Even after this the patient’s blood pressure was only 114 over 84, while the pulse rate was still a frightening “170-plus.”
Almost as soon as Senator Long had been brought to the hospital, volunteer blood donors were typed, and their blood cross-matched with that of the patient. According to the laboratory report incorporated in the hospital chart, J. A. Vitiano, Eddie Knoblock, Colonel Rougon, J. R. Pollett, M. E. Bird, George Castigliola, and Paul Voitier were marked “incompatible”; C. J. Campbell, John Kirsch, “no name,” Joe Bates, Senator Noe, Bill Melton, and a Mr. Walker were found to be compatible. In addition, “no name,” Bates, Noe, and Melton were also marked with an “O.K.”