Remembrance of A Childhood Illness: Part Three and Finale: The Recovery

(photo- Wikipedia)

My hospital bed was in the children's ward. Most of the new arrivals after my surgery seemed to have had appendectomies or tonsillectomies, and every time the nurses brought in a still unconscious patient, straight from the operating room and reeking of ether, I became extremely nauseated.

As soon as I was judged to be out of danger and on the road to recovery, Daddy had to go back to his base. But he drove to Albuquerque on Friday, leaving after his full work day, and showed up at my bedside around midnight, bringing a few pieces of peppermint candy and an orange. He peeled the orange with the small pocket knife he always carried, then broke it into sections and fed it to me, piece by piece until I had eaten the whole thing. The nurses, knowing his situation, set up screens around my bed so we would not wake the other children, and let him stay as long as he wished. He would tell me stories and jokes and try to cheer me up. I was very homesick, and I missed my Daddy. He would come again on Saturday, then drive back to his base in Colorado. I was in the hospital about ten days, during which two weekends occurred, and he made the trip twice.

I know that my mother must have visited me, also; unfortunately, those visits are not part of my memories. Sometimes I wonder why I don't remember them.

Insofar as I could determine, the nursing staff of St. Joseph Hospital was comprised entirely of Catholic nuns, dressed in full, shoe-top-touching black habits, with wimples, veils and all. Being a good Southern Baptist child, it was probably the first time in my life that I had seen a nun in full regalia. I’m quite sure the surgical nurses didn’t wear habits, but I don’t recall seeing any of them. All the floor nurses were nuns; and more sweet, gentle and dedicated persons you could not have wished for.

After about five days of bed confinement, one nun was assigned to give me some physical exercise (I was very weak, already having been in bed at home for some time before the surgery) and to teach me to walk without turning my head to the left. I remember her taking her hands and straightening my head as we walked in the halls. She also made me exercise my eye, the controlling muscle of which had been restored to full function several days following the surgery. I was lucky; sometimes the muscle paralysis caused by mastoiditis is permanent.

When I was released from the hospital I returned home, but did not go back to school, which had only a few more weeks left in the year. I remember that my mother was concerned that I would have to repeat the second grade since I had missed so many days of the school year. Her fears were allayed; I was deemed to have learned what second grade students are required to know, and was promoted to the third grade.

I had always been a skinny child, but during my illness, I had lost quite a bit of weight and was about 15 pounds lighter than I should have been at my age. Part of my post-surgical treatment was extra nourishment in the form of malt, considered at the time (and in some parts of the world, still) to be a wonderful dietary supplement. I ate Horlicks Tablets by the fist-full, drank milk with extra cream and flavored with Horlicks powder, and at least once a week (sometimes more often) I was treated to a "malt” from one of the local dairy’s ice-cream bar (made with extra ice cream, chocolate flavoring and extra malt.) The flavor of malted milk is still one of my favorites, and I try to keep a jar of Horlicks "nourishing food drink" in my cupboard.

Even after all those extra calories, I gained only about five pounds, and remained "string bean-scrawny" until I was in my mid-forties -- then it all caught up with me!

I lay about eating and drinking and basking in the sun, generally being treated like I had been snatched back from the jaws of death (which I had been), but the special treatment came to an abrupt halt when school started in the fall. I’d received a “clean bill of health” report from the doctor (with the caution to keep water out of my ear), my hair had grown back, and it was once again business as usual. I’m sure my mother was happy not to have to coddle me anymore, and even more glad that I had no more ear aches.

As a result of the surgery, my skull has a very flat spot behind my left ear. If that spot is rubbed gently, it sounds “hollow” and a bit drum-like. It’s a wonder that my hearing was not affected. To this day, I can tell no difference between the hearing in my left and right ears. I know that my skull is not as strong at that spot as it is elsewhere on my head, and I have had some concerns during my adult life about the possibility of sustaining a blow to that area. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much of a hit to go straight into my brain. (Can you tell I watch too many Forensic Files and Dr. G., Medical Examiner programs on TV?)


*The End*

Back later with another tale.

December 8, 1941

I realize that yesterday was a special remembrance day for many veterans in our nation, even though it's been 67 years since the event, and "a lot of water has gone under the bridge," as they say. However, I don't remember anything special that happened to me on that day. It's the day afterwards, December 8, about which I now write.

I was a "big girl," having turned 7 years old in the previous September. Our family was living in Las Vegas, NM; at least most of us, Mama and we four kids. Daddy was home only on weekends, his job at the CCC camp in the mountains keeping him away all through the week.

Daddy was granted some leave/vacation time for the second full week in December. On this particular morning, he and Mama headed for Santa Fe for a week of together time, leaving us in the capable hands of "Grandpa and Grandma" Carrington, who owned the house within which we had an apartment. Since there was no radio in the 1937 Chevy, they had also taken Daddy's portable short-wave battery-operated radio .

I had just arrived home from school for lunch (we did that, in those days) when suddenly Mama and Daddy were back at home. What happened? What happened?

What happened was the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On the way to Santa Fe, they were listening to the radio and heard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's address to the joint session of Congress: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Declaration of War against Japan. December 8, 1941 (Wikipedia)

I don't recall much else about the remainder of that day except sitting on the stairs to our apartment, listening to that little radio and hearing a lot of information I didn't fully understand but which I realized, even at 7 years of age, would change our lives.

The upshot was that Daddy had to report back to his CCC camp on the double. I don't remember any of the activity that took place afterwards, but it was only a few days until Daddy had gone to Grand Junction, Colorado, now being a 55-year old civilian employee of the United States Army. He was employed to teach automotive mechanics at the Army facility at Grand Junction. He would later be transferred to Ft. Lewis, Washington to do the same sort of training, and would not be home again except for emergencies (another post) until after VE Day in 1945.

TODAY'S FLOWERS: Not Quite Ripe - Post 55

Hydrangea

The hydrangea bush bearing this not-quite-ready bloom was planted in my yard in 1965. The original plant was a gift from one of our church friends at the time of my father's funeral, in January, 1965. It was a beautiful pot-plant that we nurtured through the cold months inside the house. We planted it when the ground was warmed, late in the spring of that year. The bush is now about 6 feet wide and about 5 feet tall, and bears at least a hundred blooms each year. When fully matured, the blooms are a beautiful, slightly blue-violet all over.

Today's Flowers is a new weekly Meme, posted each Monday, which was created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos and, if you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

My Mother - Part One - Post 53

Photo - Circa 1921

Today would have been my mother’s 107th birthday. She was born on August 8, 1901, in Temple, Texas, 2nd child and first daughter of her parents. There were nine more children born into this family, but two died in childhood, one in a tragic accident -- a subject for another post, someday. The youngest, and last surviving, of my mother's siblings, my uncle Truett, died only a few months ago at the age of 85.

I don't know how old my mother was when the family moved from Temple to Victoria County, in South Texas – that’s South with a Capital S! Not the farthest south one can go in Texas, but only 20 miles or so from the Gulf of Mexico. Mama's father bought a farm in a place called Crescent Valley. There they raised cotton, chickens, and the children, six boys and five girls.

Mama graduated from high school in Victoria, a nearby town, and then attended Baylor Female College in Belton, Texas (now Mary Hardin-Baylor University) for a year. Mama always called it "Baylor-Belton." It was while she was in college that she learned to play Bridge, a card game she continued to enjoy for years. She also became 'modish' to the point that she, and most of the other young ladies, bound their breasts so as to appear flat-chested -- which was all the rage in 'flapper days.' She said it was quite painful, and absolutely forbid her younger sisters to do it. In all my memory, Mama never had a 'bosom.' Her breasts were droopy and as flat as pancakes, while her younger sisters all had nice figures.

I don't know if it was a matter of funding but, as mentioned above, Mama completed only one year at Baylor-Belton, then taught school in a small town for a term (one could do that in those days; a college degree was not required). I think she discovered that teaching was not what she wanted to do for the long term and went to work in the accounting department of the Woolworth store in San Antonio. Somewhere along the line, she had completed some secretarial courses and I remember well her trying to teach me Gregg Shorthand (I learned to write my first name, Pat, and the word "dray," not a word I ever heard used in anyone's conversation.)

Mama's father died in, I believe, 1924. Mama left San Antonio and went back home to Crescent Valley and to work in nearby Victoria. As the eldest daughter, when not at work she helped her newly-widowed mother with the younger children, and her wages also helped to support the family. The youngest child was only about 1 year old when Grandpa died, and there would have been several more young children still at home. One of Mama’s brothers, my uncle Talley, quit school when his daddy died, and became the “man of the house” -- at age 14.

Mama told me that she bought a small car (she called it a “koo-pay”) with part of her earnings, and drove over the country dirt roads into Victoria to work as a secretary/bookkeeper for the Gross-Parish Company, where she was still working when she met my father. (I wrote about that in Post 20 - My Father.)

Mama was almost 32 years old when she and Daddy married, on July 24, 1933. They moved around quite a bit to wherever employment opportunities for my father arose. The Great Depression was still in full swing, and jobs were hard to come by. I was the first-born of four children, arriving on this earth in Yorktown, Texas; my sister Meg was born in Kingsville (home of the famous and h.u.g.e. King Ranch); and the youngest daughter, my sister Carol, was born in El Paso. Mama's last child, and only son, my brother Eddie, was born in Las Vegas, NM. I wrote about the day of his birth in Post 6, April 10,1941 . Mama told me in much later years that she was horrified to learn that she was pregnant and worried a great deal about how she and Daddy were going to provide for themselves and four children.

Then -- World War II

End of Part One