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dismissed it from my mind. It would not be until nearly fourteen years later that my viscera/understanding of his experience would occur. The year 1974 was so rough on me that for a while | thought | could actually be going insane. | wondered if | was being drugged without my knowledge. | found myself wallowing in paranoid fantasies, and | gave voice to these at press conferences. | expressed the fear that my plane might crash. | resorted to using expressions like “They can point a gun at your head.” | was practically begging for mercy. When | entered Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Long Beach on October 23 for my phlebitis condition, | brought my own jar of wheat germ, because | was afraid that poison would be put in my food. On October 29, the doctors placed a clamp on a vein in my pelvis in order to prevent the blood clot from moving to my lungs where it could have killed me. It was then that | went into cardiovascular failure. On October 30, Ron Ziegler announced, “We almost lost President Nixon yesterday afternoon.” This was almost three months after my resignation, and he was still referring to me as President. “Poor Ron,” | thought to myself. “He thinks he’ s still in Disneyland.” For a few hours | was considered to be clinically dead. It was an incredibly ecstatic feeling. | was conscious, but on some other plane of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015092