Despite the unusual circumstance, in terms of the distinguished personage who was the patient, I think the people who had gathered or who had congregated were so accustomed to doing resuscitative procedures of this nature that they knew where to fit into the resuscitation team without having a preconceived or predirected plan, because, as obviously—some people were doing things not necessarily in their specialty, but there was the opening and there was the necessity for this being done.
There were three others who came in as I did who recognized at once the neck wound, in fact, where the wound was, would indicate that we would have serious pulmonary problems unless a tracheotomy tube was put in. This is one way of avoiding pushing air out through a fractured trachea and down into each chest cavity, which would cause a pneumothorax or a collapse of the lungs. These were doctors Malcolm Perry, Charley Baxter, and Robert McClelland, who with Dr. Carrico's help, I believe, started the tracheotomy.
About this time Drs. Kemp Clark and Paul Peters came in, and Dr. Peters because of the appearance of the right chest, the obvious physical characteristics of a pneumothorax, put in a closed chest drainage—chest tube. Because I felt no peripheral pulse and was not aware of any pulse, I reported this to Dr. Clark and he started closed chest cardiac massage.
There were other people—one which started an I.V. in a cutdown in the right leg and one a cutdown in the left arm. Two of my department connected up the cardioscope, in which we had electrical silence on the cardioscope as Dr. Clark started closed chest massage. That's the sequence of events as I reconstructed them that day and dictated them on my report, which you have here, I think.
Mr. Specter. Speaking of your report, Dr. Jenkins, permit me to show you a group of papers heretofore identified as Commission Exhibit No. 392 which has also been identified by Mr. Price, the hospital Administrator, as being photostatic copies of original reports in his possession and controlled as Custodian of Records, and I show you what purports to be a report from you to Mr. Price, dated November 22, 1963, and ask you if in fact this 2-page report was submitted by you to Mr. Price?
Dr. Jenkins. Yes; it was.
Mr. Specter. Now, going back to the wound which you observed in the neck, did you see that wound before the tracheotomy was performed?
Dr. Jenkins. Yes; I did, because I was just connecting up the endotracheal tube to the machine at the time and that's when Dr. Carrico said there was a wound in the neck and I looked at it.
Mr. Specter. Would you describe that wound as specifically as you can?
Dr. Jenkins. Well, I'm afraid my description of it would not be as accurate, of course, as that of the surgeons who were doing the tracheotomy, because my look was a quick look before connecting up the endotracheal tube to the apparatus to help in ventilation and respiration for the patient, and I was aware later in the day, as I should have put it in the report, that I thought this was a wound of exit because it was not a clean wound, and by "clean" clearly demarcated, round, punctate wound which is the usual wound of an entrance wound, made by a missile and at some speed. Of course, entrance wounds with a lobbing type missile, can make a jagged wound also, but I was of the impression and I recognized I had the impression it was an exit wound. However, my mental appreciation for a wound—for the wound in the neck, I believe, was sort of—was overshadowed by recognition of the wound in the scalp and skull plate.