FDR's Poor Health in His Final Months

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Alonzo L Hamby, A President Fought for His Life; In the middle of World War II, the ailing FDR spent four weeks resting at a private estate. Wall Street Journal, Sept 17, 2016
http://www.wsj.com/articles/his- ... t-months-1474050143
(book review on Joseph Lelyveld, His Final Battle; The final months of Franklin Roosevelt. Knopf, 2016)

the first five paragraphs:

" 'His Final Battle[ begins in December 1943, during Franklin D Roosevelt's arduous five-week journey to North Africa and Tehran for meetings with Gen Dwight D Eisenhower, Chiang Kai-shek, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. The travel—by battleship across the Atlantic and aircraft in the Mediterranean area—was a wearing experience for a 61-year-old man already displaying symptoms of congestive heart failure. * * * [The book] employs the journey as the beginning episode in a careful, somber and sometimes harrowing account of FDR's last 16 months [FDR: 1882- Apr 12, 1945 (died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke) ].

"A few months after the North Africa trip, a chronically tired Roosevelt decamped to South Carolina for four weeks of rest on an estate owned by the financier Bernard Baruch. (The president’s whereabouts were concealed by wartime censorship.) * * *

"By then his declining health was managed primarily by [Navy] Lt Cmdr Howard Bruenn * * * FDR's father, James Roosevelt, had suffered a heart attack in 1890, at age 62, and declined slowly over a decade. * * *

"What we know of Roosevelt's blood pressure is horrifying. The president's full medical records disappeared after his death. Drawing on what is available in an account published by Bruenn, the author cites 'a worrisome 186/108' and a few subsequent readings ranging from 192/106 to 226/118. (A normal blood-pressure reading, for a man at Roosevelt's age, might be 130/85.)

"Three-quarters of a century later, drugs exist to manage high blood pressure and cardiac problems, but options were limited in the mid-1940s. Bruenn recommended a drastically curtailed work schedule and a weight-loss program. Roosevelt obediently accepted a stricter diet but could not escape the stressful responsibilities * * *

Note:There is no need to read the rest.