Hospital years

Filling in this area will not be easy. I do have a number of clear memories but chronologically they are confused and rather a blur. I'll do what I can anyway and fill in with things that I know and things that I guess.

My time in the children's ward was short. I had an infectious, notifiable disease and could not be kept with normal people, so I was ushered off to an isolation hospital in a city, some 3o miles away from home. My parents never had a car and so bus journeys were the only way that they could visit and costs prevented those from happening too often. I was strapped into a metal frame with leather attachments that kept me horizontal and still, and that was to be my life for some months while I was given large daily injections of streptomycin. I remember watching the trolley come around each morning, knowing that there was a needle the size of a drainpipe heading in my direction. I can even remember the feeling of the needle going into my bottom and the cold numbness of the intramuscular injection. It hurt, and I wince even as I write this. To this day I have a fear of injections and will do whatever I can to avoid them.

The nurses were very kind and under the control of a fierce looking ward sister. Not being able to get out of bed, much of the ward was a mystery to me and I recall imagining that hoprrible things happened to people who went into the room at the end. A nightmare that recurred throughout my childhood was of my bed bing wheeled into that room by the ward sister and there she cheerfully told me that my head had to come off.

Each day, whatever the weather, our beds were wheeled out onto the verandah. This was so that we could all enjoy the fresh air, thought to be a panacaea for TB sufferers. It was often cold and sometimes even damp but it was part of the routine. Nurses would spend some time with us and I recall being taught to read while lying in my frame. This brought the escape of reading books and I would retire into my own little world that I shared with characters from Enid Blyton's books.

I did everything in bed and yearned to get out and stand up, but that wasn't to be for two years.

I have no memory of being either happy or unhappy there. I remember the odd visit from family but they never seemed to be important or life changing in any way. I felt out of control and that my life was not something that I had any say in.