Magnificent Desolation (15 page)

Finally I went to see the base flight surgeon, Dr. Dick Slarve, a colonel who specialized in working with pilots. As a flight surgeon he wielded the power to ground any pilot, including me, whom he felt was not medically ready to fly. Dick had accompanied our group on the trip to Europe, and we had gotten to know each other. I liked him and, more important, I trusted him. I felt sure that I could talk to him about my inner turmoil as well as the physical pains I was experiencing. By this time I knew that I desperately needed help, even if my malady went on my permanent records, and I expressed that to Dick. Since coming to Edwards, I told him, I had begun to experience two problems: reoccurring episodes of the blues, and a very real physical manifestation of pain in my neck and shoulder. I thought perhaps that I needed a back operation because of the numbness I was feeling in my back and some of the sensations I felt in my arm, and to some extent in my leg as well. I knew that Mike Collins had undergone a back operation that had also alleviated a leg problem, and he had returned successfully to the astronaut corps. Maybe, if there was a physical malady, the doctors could fix it, and I could get back to work. I asked Dick about the possibility of going to the Air Force hospital in San Antonio to be checked out for my shoulder and neck problem—and perhaps any other problems.

We talked for a while, and he suggested that we call Dr. Carlos Perry at Brooks Medical Center in San Antonio. Dr. Perry was an Air Force doctor, but he could be discreet; he could oversee exams of my physical condition, and decide what was the best course for dealing with my mental distress. We set an appointment with Dr. Perry for October 26, 1971, in San Antonio.

A few days before that date, my West Point class of ′51 was gathering in New York for its twentieth class reunion. I had little desire to see old classmates, but it seemed like a good time for Joan and me to go home for a visit, and perhaps have the opportunity to inform our families that I planned to seek professional help. We didn’t want them
learning about my going to Brooks secondhand. We visited Joan’s dad and stepmother in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, where I had a chance to have a good heart-to-heart talk with Mike Archer, Joan’s father. Mike and I had always gotten along well, even though he could probably guess from Joan’s disposition that things were not great for us at home. Nevertheless, Mike and I sat up one night talking about my concerns. I told him about my neck and shoulder pain, and about the lack of any sense of accomplishment I was experiencing at Edwards. Mike tried to offer advice and suggestions, but I could tell he was baffled. He couldn’t understand why a guy like me, who had been so goal-oriented all his life, simply could not find another nut to crack. Surely there were other things in the Air Force for me to accomplish.

The next morning I refused to get out of bed and drive to West Point. “I don’t feel like going,” I told Joan. “Spend the day with your family and I’ll stay right here.”

Joan wouldn’t hear of it. She enlisted her father’s help, and between the two of them, they cajoled me into making the trip. We arrived late, having stopped along the way several times ostensibly to view the multicolored fall foliage, but mostly for me to breathe and clear my head. By the time we got to West Point, the homecoming football game had already started, so Joan and I slipped into our seats inconspicuously. After the game, Joan encouraged me to attend my class reception, and it turned out to be an enjoyable evening.

The following day, Joan returned to her family’s home in New Jersey and I went into New York City for a directors’ meeting of the cable television company on whose board I sat. The new chairman of the board had asked that directors not involved with the company should resign, and I was only too happy to comply. I was convinced the company was simply using my Apollo 11 fame in an effort to stave off an inevitable financial collapse. I left the meeting and returned to the hotel where I had checked in, but didn’t stay for long.

I hadn’t seen Marianne in months, so I wasted no time in heading for her apartment. She greeted me passionately at first, but before long our conversation took an unexpected twist. “Buzz, I’m thinking of getting
married again,” she said almost casually, and then informed me that a rival had actually proposed to her. Whether Marianne’s statement was sincere or merely meant to prod me to action, I’ll never know. Regardless, her words sent a surge of panic through my system, and I began offering her everything but the moon. “I’ll change, I’ll get some help, I’ll divorce Joan—anything, Marianne, but please don’t do anything rash. Give me a chance to get things in order, just wait for me.”

If I was making only half-promises, Marianne was offering even less. “I might wait a bit, but not for long, Buzz. Make up your mind.”

I
LEFT
N
EW
Y
ORK
and headed back to New Jersey to meet Joan, her dad, and my father. Trying to explain my mental and emotional troughs to Joan’s dad was tough enough; hoping that my father might understand was an exercise in futility. I could have made his arguments for him: “Depression? What’s depression? There’s no such thing. People didn’t get depressed in my day, especially soldiers; they just got up and got going and toughed it out. Why, look at me. Do you think life has been easy for me? No. And what about you? You have a reputation to uphold. You are not only a pilot, you’re an MIT scientist, an astronaut who walked on the moon!”

Dad became especially agitated when Joan and I told him about the appointment in San Antonio, and he encouraged me to cancel it. “Son, don’t you know what that could do to your career? That could ruin you!”

I didn’t even have time to respond before Joan jumped in adamantly. “I don’t care whether going for help has an adverse effect on Buzz’s career or not. I just want Buzz to feel good and get well.”

For a few long moments we all sat silently, then, one by one, we drifted off to bed. The decision had been made.

The next morning Joan and I flew from Newark to San Antonio to keep the appointment with Dr. Perry. We unloaded on the doctor, telling him everything we could in our efforts to explain the changes we both recognized since I had returned from the moon. The nights of restless thoughts tormenting me with questions. The mornings I woke
up with no answers. What was I going to accomplish that day? What was my assigned mission? If it wasn’t something extraordinary, why even get out of bed?

Dr. Perry didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with me physically, so he focused more on the issues of emotional and mental stress. Then he surprised me by turning to Joan, probing into her thoughts and feelings about our marriage. Joan answered the doctor’s questions so straightforwardly, I turned to look at her, and when I did, I noticed the tears trickling down her cheeks. For the first time it hit me just how much of a toll my emotional struggles had taken on Joan. “For some time now, I have been considering a divorce,” she admitted to the doctor and me at the same time, “for the sake of the children.” Dr. Perry didn’t seem nearly as surprised as I was. Joan continued, “But I don’t want to even think about a divorce right now. I want Buzz to get well. We can decide what to do about our marriage later, but right now I just want my husband well.”

I didn’t say a word to Joan or to the doctor the entire time Joan spoke. I simply sat there, staring at my hands. Dr. Perry quickly concluded our session and promised that he would be in touch with us within a week or so. I urged him to get me in sooner if possible.

Joan and I spoke very little as we returned to Edwards, but we had a glimmer of hope that something good might come from our attempt to get help. Two days later I went to see Dr. Slarve again, insisting that I needed help immediately, not a few days from now as Dr. Perry had promised. Dick informed me that he had been in contact with Dr. Don Flinn, the Air Force psychiatrist who just a few years earlier had examined me and declared me mentally and emotionally fit to be an astronaut. Dr. Flinn was no longer working directly with NASA, but was nearby on the staff of UCLA’s neuropsychiatric institute. Dick let me know that Dr. Flinn wanted to see me. I hadn’t seen Flinn in eight years, but I figured I had nothing to lose. More than anyone, he probably had some insight into what goes on inside an astronaut’s head. Maybe he could help.

Dick called Flinn back and set up an appointment for that same afternoon. Dick had no sooner hung up the phone when the analytical
part of me kicked into gear. Wait a minute! Flinn was the doctor who had certified me as competent to be an astronaut; it might not look too good on his record for me to be anything less than one of the supermen NASA projected us to be.

But my meeting with Dr. Flinn proved uneventful and of little consequence, other than speeding up the process of getting me back to see Dr. Perry in San Antonio. He talked with me for less than an hour, then walked me to the staff driver and instructed him to stay with me until I boarded my plane.

It was late when I got off the plane in Texas, but Dr. Perry was waiting for me at the airport. The doctor took me directly to Wilford Hall, the hospital adjoining Brooks Air Force Base. Ostensibly I was there to be examined for the pain in my shoulder and neck, so I was given a private room on the second floor in the section with patients who had suffered neck injuries. Two floors up was the psychiatric ward, where I might just happen to stop by.

The nurse gave me a sleeping pill, which I gladly accepted. I awakened the following morning, half expecting to find myself in a strait-jacket in some sort of mental hospital, but I quickly discovered that Wilford Hall looked and functioned much like any other military hospital. Nurses bustled in and out of rooms, doctors passed while staring at their clipboards, and recovering patients waved to each other as they hobbled up and down the sun-drenched halls.

That morning the doctors gave me a complete physical examination, and took extensive X-rays of my neck and shoulder areas. The neck scans proved inconclusive; the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. Years later I underwent several neck operations, so maybe the doctors at Brooks missed something. Could the problem in my neck have been caused by the g forces I had endured as an astronaut? Nobody could tell, and nobody at NASA was concerned enough to find out.

That first afternoon the doctors put me through a series of mental aptitude and psychological tests. Ironically, they were the same types of exams I had taken when Dr. Flinn was testing me to ascertain my readiness to be an astronaut nearly a decade earlier.

The doctors at Brooks quickly ascertained that my problems more likely stemmed from mental and emotional stress than from any physical ailment. I stayed in my private room on the second floor for my neck treatments, but several times a day I slipped upstairs to the psychiatric ward. The real reason for my visit was kept a secret, although no doubt more people were aware of it than I realized at the time.

On Saturday morning I met Colonel John Sparks, chief of psychiatry at Wilford Hall, and the primary doctor handling my case. Sparks was an easygoing, friendly sort of man, and seemed more like a drinking buddy than a “talk and pills” psychiatrist. He informed me that my psychological tests had yielded almost the same results as when I had first applied to be an astronaut. Whatever was causing my mental trauma, it was not a change in mental acuity. Sparks said that they wanted to run me through some more tests. He and I would not begin working together in earnest until Monday.

I took that as a good sign. At least the doctors weren’t wringing their hands and saying, “We’ve got to get Aldrin fixed,
now!”

That first weekend at Brooks, I grew restless at the prospect of a weekend of inactivity at the hospital, so I asked the nurse for a weekend pass. The nurse looked up my chart, and since I had not yet been diagnosed with any illness and had not been admitted as a psychiatric patient, she filled out a form and handed me a pass, signed by Dr. Sparks that allowed me to leave. A few days earlier I’d been so dazed and distressed I probably could not have found Wilford Hall, and now they were letting me out on my own recognizance!

I didn’t really have any place in particular to go, but since I was in Texas, I decided to call my friend and former neighbor in Houston, Merv Hughs. Merv invited me over to visit, so I hopped on a plane from San Antonio. Late Saturday night, liberally lubricated by Scotch, I confided to Merv the real reason why I was in Texas. Merv looked at me quizzically and seemed somewhat surprised. I enjoyed the weekend with Merv, and visited with other friends as well, including Dean Woodruff, the minister of the church my family and I had attended while I worked in the space program. I let Dean in on my clandestine
hospital stay, and he, too, seemed nonplussed. “Depression? You’re the last guy I’d ever figure to be depressed,” Dean chortled. By midday Sunday, I returned to Wilford Hall and, for no apparent reason, once again found myself strangely in a down mood. Maybe being around “space stuff” had energized me, but then I had to walk away from it and head back to Wilford Hall. I was relieved to be away from Edwards, but I was frustrated that I had no future that I regarded worth pursuing.