It must have been 1953 when I turned eleven since I was born in 1942. The next summer would have been the summer of 1954. That summer was a major turning point in my life. I’m going to put down as much as I remember of it, but that was the summer I contacted Rheumatic Fever.
I had had measles earlier that year and I’ve since heard that measles can lead to rheumatic fever. I started to feel that something was wrong in early May, 1954. I told my mother that my joints were hurting and she took me to the doctor. He immediately put me in the hospital because this was the era of polio and other serious diseases and they couldn’t cure them as easily as they can now days.
I was in serious pain. I remember crying a lot (I was only 11, remember). I spent 2 weeks in the hospital and then they sent me home. I was sent to bed and told not to get up for three months. So, I spent June, July and August in bed. You may have already figured out that that represents the summer months, usually off from school. So I got to miss my summer and didn’t really miss any school. I’m not sure what grade I was in (probably 4th or 5th), but my teacher told my mom that missing the last couple weeks of school in May were not enough to affect the year, so they passed me on to the next grade and all I missed was a summer of playing that I felt I was entitled to.
We did not have a TV at the house on Kelley St. If we did, it would have been in the living room and I was stuck in the bedroom. So, since I had nothing else to do, my mother would go to the library and bring home 10 or 15 books for me to read. She did this about once a week, so I went through a lot of books during that summer. The books I remember the most were the “Freddy the Pig” books by Walter R Brooks. I just looked them up on Amazon.com and most of the 26 books in the series are still in print. They are about a talking pig who is an amateur detective and solves crimes around the barnyard. Some of the titles are “Freddy the Detective”, “Freddy the Magician” and “Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars”. I loved those books. During that summer, I read every one I could get my hands on plus any others that my mother picked out at the library. I’m sure that that was the beginning of my love of books and why, I still read to this day.
Rheumatic Fever is a disease that attacks the muscles of the heart. I was told that some people who get it end up in a wheel chair for the rest of their lives. I was told that I was lucky. That they caught it in time and not much damage was done. I was, however, excused from sports for the rest of my school life. I was never able to participate in any sport or activity that would put a strain on the heart. (Explains a lot, right) I was supposed to take a medicine for the rest of my life, but I took it for a few months and then said “To heck with it” and stopped. Never have taken it after that. Later, when I graduated from high school and joined the Air Force (a chapter I will write in a few weeks), because of my history, they did a special check of my heart and almost wouldn’t let me join, but in the end, said it looked like it had healed just fine and so I could join the Air Force. After that I never worried about it again.
I think I dodged a major bullet.
Dad
You completely dodged a bullet. Things happen for a reason! Wow, that’s crazy dad. I remember you telling us you had rheumatic fever, but I think when you told us I didn’t know the severity of it like I do now that I’m older. Pretty crazy how everything from our youth and growing up molds us to the people we are today.
Kristy