Bucket lit 30 actuating the power of positive thinking

April 20, 2014

In 1962 I spent the month of June in Yokosuka, Japan in the Navy hospital. I had been deployed as a Machinist Mate on the USS Hornet CVS 12. While working in the engine room it was necessary to work in very hot, very damp, very noisy conditions. The access to each area on the ship was controlled by hatches (small water tight doors) and ladders. There were six levels above the hanger deck and six levels below, plus the bilges and places to store ballast. Some of the ladders were straight up and down, while others had a slight tilt to them. While running up and down these ladders many times daily, I begin to feel very uncomfortable and found it difficult to make my feet move freely. I went to sick bay; they defined my illness as spondolethesis (sp) and a form of scoliosis. Since we were on a WesPac six-month tour of duty, they took me to the Yokosuka hospital where the fun began.

To my knowledge no tests were ever run and no discussion of the ship’s sick bay diagnosis was ever considered while in the hospital. The “cure” was to do extensive muscle building exercises each day. Each time the orderlies would come in to check on my progress I would share with them that I wanted to find out the problem so I could move forward; but, yes I still hurt, felt numb, had a difficult time working my legs and was sure that back I the same environment I would have the same difficulties.

Today, at age 70 I still have numbness, severe back pain, and all the other sensations associated with the malady I had fifty plus years ago.

I watch with horror as several hundred thousand wonderful patriotic American citizens are returned to civilian life after years and many times decades of war-time duty. It is on a daily basis that we see one, or more of our citizen soldiers finding life too horrifying to live and choosing to commit suicide. Very frequently these deaths are attributed to suicide by “cop”, or acting out in such egregious manner as to kill and maim others; thereby justifying their release from their earthly hell.

Call it anxiety, depression, PTSD, or mistletoe interventions, I believe what happened to me 52 years ago and what is happening to so many, including members of my own family is frighteningly similar. I think my mind became so fragile in wanting to make things better that I started living as though those aches and pains, as horrifying as they were, were the essence of my life. You have all heard the culmination of this story, but it goes a long way to understanding some of the mysteries of life. One day a fine, young Lt Commander came in and said in a very casual voice, Jacobs, you have been here for just over a month now and nothing has changed, “why do you want to get out of the Navy”? I was shocked and said, if that is what you think, stop playing games with me and send me back to the ship. I was out of the hospital that day heading back to the USS Hornet CVS 12, where I spent three more years in active duty.

To this day, with all the modern medications and interventions for pain and mental fragility, we still find an overabundance of unanswered questions regarding the human experience. I have come to understand the irrefutable fact that medical science is a practice and a patient exercise in sorting through the miracle of the human body and mind. Just as “blood letting” by barbers was the norm in the nineteenth century, surgery in the twentieth century, and atomically generated bots, in the twentieth century, move to the head of the medical class, we will always be way short of the perfection of life given us By God, our Father in Heaven. 

It is with our best source of understanding, love, and hope for a bright and marvelous future that I have come to place my eternal well -being. God is here for us. He loves us and makes that desire known throughout our lives. Even when we deny, denigrate, and attempt to destroy his presence in our lives he is still there, loving hoping, and caring for us. Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book entitled “The Power of Positive Thinking”. I am going to find that marvelous antique book and re-read it. I believe it tells the whole story. I believe that we can go forward with an unrelenting fervor our families, for our futures, and for ourselves.

God  bless us all as we look to the Savior, Jesus Christ at the Easter season, and to our Heavenly Father

Duane Jacobs, Grandfather, father, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend