Health ailments didn’t diminish positive attitude

Ronald Reagan, who at 69 was the oldest man ever elected president of the United States, maintained a thumbs-up demeanor for the public during several bouts with illness during and after his presidency.

But in later years, as Alzheimer’s took a toll on his mental functioning, he was seen less and less in public. The most traumatic health scare was on March 30, 1981, just 10 weeks into his presidency, when a would-be assassin’s bullet hit Reagan in the upper chest.

The bullet, entering below the left arm, traveled downward and was deflected into the left lung, coming to rest an inch from his heart. He was rushed to a hospital, complaining of soreness in the rib cage, and collapsed in the hospital corridor.

The bullet was removed during three hours of surgery, and Reagan spent 12 days in the hospital. During his recuperation, he was photographed smiling in his robe and joked to his wife, Nancy: “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

In July 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove a suspicious polyp from his colon. Two feet of the intestine were removed, and tests days later revealed that the growth was cancerous but had not spread far. Doctors were confident that they had removed all of the disease, and tests during the rest of Reagan’s presidency showed no sign of cancer.

Doctors quoted Reagan as saying after the surgery, “Well, I’m glad that that’s all out.”

Reagan also had surgery during his second presidential term for skin cancer (1985), for enlargement of the prostate (1987), and for Dupuytren’s contracture, a condition that caused one of his fingers to curve inward (1989).

Later in 1989, after leaving the White House, he was thrown from a horse and, weeks later, had neurosurgery to remove a pool of blood that formed on his brain.

When he announced his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in November 1994, Reagan said in a letter to the American people he hoped his disclosure would improve public knowledge about of the disease, as his past disclosures had raised awareness about cancer.

The incurable disease destroys the brain’s memory cells, eventually causing personality change and disorientation. About 100,000 Americans die from it every year.

“Unfortunately, as Alzheimer’s disease progresses, the family often bears a heavy burden,” Reagan wrote. “I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience.”

He wrote he was making the disease public for a purpose. “In the past Nancy suffered from breast cancer and I had my cancer surgeries. We found through our open disclosures we were able to raise public awareness. We were happy that as a result many more people underwent testing.”

At times during Reagan’s stay in the White House, he seemed forgetful and would lose his train of thought while talking. However, doctors said Alzheimer’s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office.

In January 2001, he fell and broke his hip, and surgeons repaired the break with a pin, plate and screws. He spent a little more than a week in the hospital. On Oct. 11 of that year, at the age of 90, Reagan became the longest-lived president ever, topping the life span of John Adams, the second president, who lived from 1735 to 1826.

His daughter Maureen, who died in 2001, wrote movingly of her father’s mental decline in an essay in Newsweek magazine in 2000.

“Earlier in the disease we did jigsaw puzzles, usually animal scenes: a farmyard, horses in a meadow, a jungle scene. We started with 300-piece puzzles and worked our way down to 100. Unfortunately, he can’t do that anymore.”