Trying to put together my childhood...

So my third admission to the hospital was from March 9, 1953 through July 19, 1953. The paper I have reports that the treatment I underwent was casts, bracing, and physical therapy. I went home walking on wooden underarm crutches, my parents told me I learned to walk at age three. I have a very cute picture of myself at age four on crutches. (When I buy a new computer, I'll post this picture and a few others.) The physical therapy was very painful because the physical therapist for orthopedic problems studied a form of therapy "invented" by a woman named Sr. Kenny; she believed that one should really push and pull on bones and muscles in order to make them work. I remember, from a later date, how painful physical therapy was; i.e., I remember yelling in pain and being told by the therapist that the therapy was going to help me.

I went home for nine months, from July 20, 1953 through April 11, 1954. I celebrated my third birthday with my parents and my brother. My mother told me that when I came home at age 3 I was not toilet trained, and when she changed my diaper I laughed at her gagging. My parents thought that children were born with lots of wisdom and adult knowledge. I probably thought my mother was playing with me while she was making gagging faces. This was one of those childhood stories I heard about as I was growing up. Needless to say it was a story that made me feel uncomfortable.

I was also born with a lazy eye and because I was severely cross eyed in my right eye after I was able to walk, and run, I would run into the corner of doorways when I was propelling myself quickly. I remember being at our house in Roseville Park. My Gramps was in the dinning room and I thought I was running toward him, but I ran into the doorway, gave myself a terrible bloody head. I can still feel the scar at age 59. When I went back to the hospital for my fourth admission one of the things they did was operate on my right eye (an operative revision of the right eye muscles) so I wouldn't be cross eyed. I re-entered the hospital on April 12, 1954 and went home on June 26, 1954. The other operation I had at that time was a rotational osteotomy of my right tibia. I went home on June 27, 1954 and was home until my fifth admission on May 14, 1956. I turned four at home and began attending kindergarten at the John G. Leach School for Crippled Children. My parents had moved to Wilmington, Delaware so I would be closer to the school. I remember my father putting me on the bus and I think of that as my first day at school, but it may just be a loving memory of my dad putting me on the bus. I'll write more about John G. Leach School in my next episode. Blessings, Iris