Tolerating the Sweet Life

It was a cold November Sunday in 1950 when I was carried out of the house and taken to the emergency room. Everything was white with yellow streaks of sun. I learned later it was a bleak, cloudy day and that I was slipping in and out of consciousness--- my eyes were playing tricks on me. I had very shallow breathing while my eyes rolled to the back of my head. I was out for the next seven-to-eight hours after arriving at the hospital. I had truly wanted to die because I did not think I could ever get any better. It was a couple weeks before I was eleven and a half; I was five feet tall and weighed fifty-nine pounds. We arrived at the hospital while Mom was holding me in the back seat. My stepfather went to the ER door and rang the bell. Since no one came immedi- ately, he ran to the front of the hospital for help. Mom could not get out without assistance. The ER elevator door opened and I guess someone came out with a gurney, or stepdad found someone to help. There were no doctors on staff; it was self help. They rolled me inside and the doctor I had seen two days prior was at the hospital, perhaps because my stepfather had phoned him earlier that day and told him they were taking me there. The doctor had said there was nothing wrong with me, I was just a kid complaining. The receptionist kept summoning him by ringing his bell code repeatedly, but he still refused to appear. It was during the polio epidemic;several neighbors had contracted that crippling disease and polio had to be considered. Mom caught another doctor by the sleeve and begged him to test my heart. He listened and admitted me, but my doctor still did not appear. Finally the doctor came with another doctor (Edward Sirlin) who brought me out of the coma; I was near death. When I awakened hours later I was in an oxygen tent with an IV in my left arm that was tied to a board, and an IV in each leg. I was so skinny from weight loss that my hip bones stuck out so far they hurt when I sat on the pot---no inside bathroom at home. See the Outhouse chapter. Someone had to stay with me around the clock since there was not enough nursing staff in 1950 to stay by my bedside. Mom took a shift, then an aunt, then another aunt. I came to on Mom's watch; I turned to her and said, “Hi.” She got a nurse. I was told I had sugar diabetes and had to have a shot every day the rest of my life. There was no counsel-ing nor educating me on my future. No one encouraged me that I even had a future and I don’t believe anyone asked my brother (three years older) how he felt about it all. It just was.