While Crenshaw assisted the other doctors, he stood by the president’s waist. It was then that he “noticed a small opening in the midline of his throat. It was small, about the size of the tip of my little finger. It was a bullet entry wound. There was no doubt in my mind,” he said, “about that wound, as I had seen dozens of them in the emergency room.”[537] Because the wound was impairing JFK’s ability to breathe, Dr. Malcolm Perry “decided to perform a tracheotomy [a surgical incision followed by the insertion of a tube] on the President’s throat, where the bullet had entered his neck.”[538]
