Senator’s sister hospitalized -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver in fair condition, says Mass. General

Boston Herald ^ | November 25, 2007 | O’Ryan Johnson

[Zakeet]

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and assassinated President John F. Kennedy, has been hospitalized for a week at Massachusetts General Hospital, where a hospital spokeswoman said she was in fair condition yesterday.

Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics, was at the Kennedy Library Nov. 16, where she was honored for her work with special-needs children; two days later was admitted to the hospital. Emily Parker, media coordinator at Massachusetts General, refused to say why Shriver was hospitalized.

Daniel Zingale, chief of staff for TV personality Maria Shriver, Eunice’s daughter, would not say whether the elder Shriver’s hospitalization was routine or the onset of something unexpected.

“She’s had a number of health challenges over the last several months,” Zingale said.

[Snip]

hriver is the 1968 founder and the force behind the Special Olympics, which was inspired by Shriver’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, who was born with mental illness.

“We all loved Rosemary, but Eunice loved her most of all,” Ted Kennedy, the long-serving Democratic senator, said at the Nov. 16 event honoring Eunice.

[Zakeet]

Sen. Edward Kennedy, above, attends a Nov. 16 event honoring the work of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

[Mercat]

I saw her speaking. She looked awful. And I’m confused. I thought the sister was lobotomozed by her father. What was her original “mental illness”?

[dbacks]

Different sister.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

I read that Mrs. Shriver’s sister had a mild to moderate form of mental retardation. Joe Kennedy did not want her to embarrass the family with a pregnancy or improper behavior, so he had her lobotomized. A nice guy wasn’t he?

[Mark was here]

Life is good when your family was into illegal activities.

[Mercat]

Given the family, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were nothing wrong with her except too much libido and spirit.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Robert Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, noted to her Mother-in-Law, Rose Kennedy, that she’d had eleven children and Rose only had nine. Rose replied, “If I had known it was a contest, I would have kept on going.”

Rose had five girls and four boys, Joseph, John, Robert and Edward (Teddy). Edward was the last of the nine.

[Bommer]

I saw her speaking. She looked awful. And I’m confused. I thought the sister was lobotomozed by her father. What was her original “mental illness”?

That was Rosemary. Rumour is that she was a very wild child (how gage that being a Kennedy, I don't know) and did not conform to daddy's will. So they institutionalized and lobotimized her. She died last year.

From Wikipedia:

Placid and easygoing as a child and teenager, the maturing Rosemary became increasingly assertive in her personality. She was subject to violent mood swings. Some observers have since attributed this behavior to her difficulties in keeping up with her active siblings as well as the hormonal surges associated with sexual maturation.

In any case, the family had difficulty dealing with the often stormy Rosemary, who had begun to sneak out at night from the convent where she was being educated and cared for.[citation needed]

Lobotomy

In 1941, when Rosemary was 23, her father was told by doctors that a lobotomy would help calm her "mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home". [2] Joseph Kennedy had the procedure performed by neurosurgeon Walter Freeman, director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., together with his partner, James W. Watts, MD, from the University of Virginia. Watts performed his neurosurgery training at Massachusetts General Hospital and later became chief of neurosurgery at George Washington University Hospital. Highly regarded, Dr. Watts became the 91st president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.

At the time of the surgery the procedure was in its infancy. Freeman and Watts had only performed 65 previous lobotomies. Freeman had no formal training in surgery and did not believe in the practice of aseptic surgical procedures. Dr. Watts, who performed the surgery while Dr. Freeman supervised, described the procedure:

We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped. —James W. Watts

Instead of producing the desired result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Rose Kennedy remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated. "Rose was devastated; she considered it the first of the Kennedy family tragedies"

Although Freeman performed more than 3,000 lobotomies on individuals with mental illness during his career, [1] today, his lobotomy treatments are viewed as discredited by the mental health community.

[Clintons Are White Trash]

I saw her while flipping thru the channels on CSpan last week and she looked awful. That being said, I hope she recovers and is home with her family soon.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Everyone calm down, she seems to have been a perfectly decent person and produced the least objectionable Kennedy offspring.

Don’t blame her for her baby brother and thievin’ father.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

Before her “operation”, she was able to count, read and do simple math. As she entered her teens to early twenties (not sure when) an incident must have occurred to encourage Joe to request the lobotomy. Very sad and selfish if you ask me.

[Boiling point]

WOW! Given the state of medical technology in the forties, I think that the procedure could have used a little refining! So, you just keep irreversibly cutting the brain until you’ve gone too far, then you’re done. I’m no brain surgeon, but I work with metal, and even I know that once you mill off too much, there ain’t no puttin’ it back!

[Dick Vomer]

c'mon. It's a Kennedy! It can't be bad. Just ask all the kind folk that are followers of the "Kennedy mystique".

They are like Gods. The people in the northeast worship them and they can do no wrong. Now if you're a Christian or believe in freedom, well then you're a kook. But the Kennedy's are "royalty" and can never ever ever be held accountable for the damage that they've caused. From Cuba to the psych hospitals being emptied to the "no child left behind/medicare drug" scam.

They are a frickin plague and are like a bad penny that keeps turning up.

Name a Kennedy and follow up with the unfortunate addiction or personality disorder.

[BenLurkin]

a Nov. 16 event honoring the work of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

Was covered on CSPAN!

What a sick joke.

[Zakeet]

Rosemary Kennedy before Joe had her lobotomized.

Rosemary Kennedy after her lobotomy.

You can read more about the sad saga here.

For what it is worth, the Kennedy's invented the story of Rosemary's "profound retardation" and the
Special Olympics as spin to control damage after an investigative reporter found the lost sister living
as a vegetable in a Wisconsin nursing home.

[Erasmus]

Aw c’mon, Boilin’, I’m just askin’ ya to move that hole twelve measly thousandths to the right!”

[beaversmom]

That is scary stuff. Makes my head feel funny to think about it.

[beaversmom]

She had those big Kennedy teeth.