Week 11: Illness and Injury. Describe your childhood illnesses or injuries. Who took care of you? Did you recuperate in your own bed, on the couch in front of the television, or somewhere else?
I was well vaccinated as a child so I did not get many childhood illnesses.
I had a brush with chicken pox. My mother said I only had a few pox on my body. I remember sitting in a hot bath and looking at my itching marks, then putting calamine lotion on them so they would stop itching.
My mother said I also had the measles.
I had my tonsils out when I was 9 because I had recurring sore throats. We were living in San Clemente at the time. This was my first trip to the hospital. The doctor came in the night before to talk about what would happen. He said I would be taking an airplane ride, putting on a gas mask and everything. I didn’t sleep much that night. The next day they wheeled me off to surgery, and I did indeed put on that gas mask. I was so tired from the lack of sleep the night before that when I woke up from the anesthesia I just wanted to go to sleep (but the nurses wanted me to wake up!). I believe I stayed in the hospital the rest of that day, then went home the next day. They gave me pink liquid medicine (amoxicillin?) that I didn’t like, so when the nurse left I would spit it out under the bed. I also put up a fit at home when I had to take that medicine. My poor mother!
Injury: we were at the zoo, and I stuck my finger in someone’s cage. That someone bit me in response. I got to visit the zoo’s doctor to get bandaged up.
