The Patient on Floor 17

How sick is the Shah? Ever since the deposed monarch suddenly arrived in the U.S. on Oct. 22 and was whisked to a Manhattan hospital, questions have been raised as to whether the trip was really necessary. Last week doubts erupted into a debate that occupied the attention of the physicians inside New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center as well as student picketers on the street outside. The Tehran government and anti-Shah activists in the U.S. charged that the Shah had used his illness as a political ploy to seek permanent sanctuary here. In the hospital, some staffers suggested sotto voce that the Shah's physicians were exaggerating his ailments: a gall bladder obstruction and histiocytic lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system for which the Shah has been under treatment for the past six years. Said one doubtful doctor: "I think that the prognosis may be overly pessimistic."

The Shah's doctors include such experts as Physician in Chief Hibbard Williams, Parasitologist Benjamin Kean, who visited the ailing monarch in Mexico, and Cancer Therapist Morton Coleman. They concede that if they have erred, it is on the side of conservatism. Robert Armao, an adviser to the Shah, has acknowledged that the ex-monarch's spleen, which originally was said to be suddenly enlarged, had been in that condition for years. But the Shah's aides insist that the lymphoma is spreading, and so do his doctors. After studying a lymph node removed shortly after his arrival at the hospital, they announced that the cancer centered in the Shah's neck had grown. They recommended that the monarch, who has not sufficiently recovered from the removal of his gall bladder to undergo chemotherapy, begin a four-week course of X-ray treatments. With this and other therapy, the Shah's prospects are encouraging; unless they are killed by the chemotherapy, which involves doses of potentially toxic drugs, many lymphoma victims survive up to ten years after diagnosis.

Without the therapy, the Shah's prospects are poor; untreated, cancers like his can kill their victims in 18 months.

Does this mean that the Shah must remain in the U.S. for treatment? The question is political, not medical. Though doctors say that they would prefer to treat the Shah in New York City, they acknowledge that he could be treated just as well in Mexico, or in France by the physicians who have cared for him in the past.

The Shah, 60, has been recuperating from surgery by watching old movies on television and receiving such visitors as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Singer Frank Sinatra and Tricia Nixon Cox. He declines to talk to the press, but his aides last week said that he was willing to leave the U.S. if his departure would help free the Tehran embassy hostages.

Privately, some hospital officers concede that they would be relieved by the Shah's departure. Housed in a $900-a-day suite on the 17th floor of the hospital's Baker Pavilion, and protected by one-way glass doors and his own armed guards, the Shah is secure. But hospital personnel will be uneasy as long as he stays. TIME has learned that last week a white-robed black man who claimed to be a Muslim slipped into the medical center's library and threatened three doctors with a samurai sword before he was disarmed by police.

Outside the medical center, the crowd of demonstrators has become smaller and quieter since the seizure of the embassy; but the protesters--carrying signs calling for the Shah's death--are still there.

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