Survival

This is my earliest memory and is not “easy” reading and may be upsetting. Proceed warned.

What are the odds of any of us being alive? For hundreds of years even the birth process was life threatening, and many children never lived to their fifth birthday. I was a late child, arriving toward the end of Mom’s reproductive life. My only sibling, Robin, is fifteen years my senior. She was grown-up and almost moved out by the time I arrived. I am sure my arrival wasn’t entirely a sweet surprise for her. Dad took a somewhat grim view of starting family life all over again just years before retiring. Soon enough I made it even more difficult.

By the time I was just over a year old, Mom noticed something odd about my face and of course consulted our doctor. I can only imagine the expressions, the various visits and consults that eventually took me to an ophthalmologist, who gave a general diagnosis of “poptosis”, which meant one eye seemed more protruded than it ought. The decision was to “watch” and see.

Well you know surgeons: can’t be happy unless cutting people up. Some months later, at the ripe old age of 22 months, Mom took me in for X-rays and probably surgery so the situation could be corrected if possible – or at least more accurately diagnosed.

Those were the “good old days” which have led to remarkable improvements in medical care. Thank goodness for the improvements! Today a 22 month old child would probably be shown what was going to happen by placing a large doll on the X-ray table and bringing the camera down close. Such niceties were not part of standard medical care for toddlers in the 1950’s. Nope, it was all business: get on with it, do what must be done.

Okay I could lie on the table. No problem.

Bring that huge black box (X-ray camera) over me? Not since I intend to live you won’t! Biddable Susanne vanished. I fought, screaming and scrambling out of Mom’s grasp and away before that monstrous thing could crush me to death.

Recaptured by a serious-looking nurse in a starched white uniform, I was replaced on the table and the dreadful thing brought back…

And I escaped again.

Two more formidable nurses were summoned.

I was pinned down on that table by three nurses and that horrible box was brought over my head. I can still see the texture on the black covering.

Screaming in terror, I fought with every bit of strength a 22 month old child has.

Try as they might, they could not hold me still enough to get the x-rays they needed.

I am sure Mom was wringing her hands, perhaps crying herself, to see me so terrified. I wasn’t looking at her. My entire attention was on preventing myself from being crushed by that oppressive-looking heavy object which these people seemed intent on smashing my head with.

Quiet background conversation. A decision was made. A hissing noise began. Holding me on the table, an ugly black mask was presented to me.

“Breathe” I was instructed.

Sobbing, I really didn’t have a choice. But the smell was horrible. I tried to stop sobbing, stop breathing at least long enough to prevent them from killing me. I don’t recall sparing a thought about Mom – even to wonder why she wasn’t helping me, tearing these horrible people away from me, protecting me. Someone may have held on to her too. Perhaps I decided my survival depended on myself. I tried to push the mask away. But the gas had done its work and I slipped into darkness.

They got their x-rays and, expecting the worst, did their cutting, removing a tumor from behind my left eye.

I woke partly blinded by the bandages around my head. But I was blinded in that eye permanently. To the doctors the fact that I lived was an unexpected miracle – they had warned my parents that there was little or no hope of my surviving. I think the miracle happened because I went under literally fighting for my life.

I vented my waking rage on a lovely bouquet of 12 yellow roses sent by generous elderly neighbors who lived across the street from us. Childless themselves, the Houghtons didn’t know what to send to comfort a child. I can’t say that tearing up the flowers soothed me at all, but I think it has colored my reception of flowers.

Sometime between my going under and awaking to vent my outrage on those roses, another child was admitted to the hospital with a highly contagious disease. It put us in quarantine, which meant all of us in the children’s ward went without seeing any family until the quarantine was lifted three weeks later. This was the age of prescribed rigid schedules for children. Toys were for play-time not for cuddling in bed at nap or night time.

There was no flexibility in this routine especially because there were no parents around to interfere.

When Mom was finally able to visit – visiting hours being during Dad’s work hours – I didn’t recognize her. It must have been a dreadful blow, because surely she had been worried about me. It took being a mother myself to realize fully how much one has to stand back when one really wants to run into the fray.

Somehow during all this, Dad accepted my existence. He had had me, then lost me, and now he had me alive again. He wasn’t prepared to surrender me when the tumor grew back, but he was able to stave off the next round of surgery until I was nine, by which time I was no longer bothered by x-ray cameras and probing doctors. By then the tumor had distorted my facial features. Beautiful? Not I! Everyone had waited until my disfigurement bothered me. Fortunately one of my friends figured out that I was bothered by my looks. Louise told her mom, and her mom told mine. And about that same time cousin Claire read an article about a ground-breaking ophthalmologist in Boston: Dr Casten. Dad took time off work to go with us, returned with us when it was time for surgery, and we had a holiday afterward. Dr Casten was able to get everything. Two more surgeries did much to correct most of the damage but took years for the full effects to settle.

Does this, my history, ring at all like William Carlos Williams' short story:The Use of Force? Are these not insights intothe hows and whys of our actions?