Memory Monday # 36

    The summer between the third grade and the fourth grade was pretty eventful. My mom was pregnant with a baby which would be my brother..(I am nearly nine years older than he and my sister was twelve years older).  I had developed a long lasting case of whooping cough...I wasn't bed ridden with it but had a lingering cough all summer!

     One day in early August, my mom went shopping and bought Judy (my sister) and me some late summer clothes.  One outfit I dearly loved was a bare midriff top with ruffles and a pair of matching shorts.  The ruffle and the cuff on the shorts was polka dots!  Judy's was blue with red and white polka dots...mine was yellow with green and white polka dots.

This is very similar to our new outfits!  The one with the shorts except with cuffs.

     I couldn't wait to try it on and see myself in the mirror!  In my excitement, I stood on this chair with wheels to pose in front of a mirror on the wall!  As I struck a most endearing pose, I leaned against the wall and the chair rolled out from under me!  I fell off but tried to catch myself...my left arm was twisted under me and the upper bone broke between my elbow and shoulder!

     My mom immediately saw it was broken, picked me up and took me to the car. She drove to the emergency room at the hospital!  She carried me inside and I was immediately attended to!  Mom later told me that our family doctor who was also a good friend of my mom and dad's (remember....small town...everyone knows everyone!)  really chewed her out for carrying me in..she was seven and half months pregnant....really big...(weight gain was not banned back then...) and I was a pretty good sized eight and a half year old!!

     I don't really know how they set bones now, but back in the 1940's, my arm was strung up in traction...pulleys and weights...over night, then the next morning, I was taken to surgery to have it set and placed in a plaster cast.  So here I am...in the hospital, strung up like a hog to be butchered...coughing my head off..and my poor PG mom is spending the night with me!  I remember my dad coming some time so mom could go home and rest a little before they were to take me to surgery to set my arm, promising me she would be back before that happened.  But she didn't make it...they came to take me; Daddy got to go with me and held me while the doctor literally twisted the bone back into place and put the cast on....Later, Mom told me she was furious with the doctor...he had purposely told her the wrong time they were going to take me up because he didn't think in her "delicate condition" she should be in surgery with me!!  Being the original Mother Lion, I can feel sympathy for the doctor!!  I am sure she really told him off!!!

     Oh, and....that darling little outfit I had on????  It had to be cut off me because they couldn't it pull it off over my head!!!  That should have taught me to not be such a show off!!!! But probably didn't!

Me with my sister, dad, grandma and J. Guy...with my broken arm!  AND..my sister is wearing  THE outfit!