Well here we are in 2013 and I'm still out here but not blogging. I've always wanted to write about my life (Don't we all?) and thought when life slowed down I would. Well, that's not going to happen. With many submissions being refused on various topics, I think this is my only venue. Blogging. So.......I'm going to do 2 blogs a month starting with birth to 4 and 5 years old and diagnosed with diabetes. It will satisfy my desire to write and cease the struggle of sending in CD's or pages, double spaced to publishers who really want better 'stuff'.
As I have said more than a few times, a diabetic is not who I am but something I live with so here goes.......
EARLY LIFE
I was born at Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and brought home to Bellerose, Long Island on 88th Drive. I had one brother, Bob, 8 years older than I and a mother and father. My mother told me I was expected on July 4th and she sat out on the stoop ( brick steps ) watching the fireworks and wondering where I was. Three days later on July 7th, I came into the world. I have always loved that birthday. Not only am I told that 7/7 is auspicious, but recently found out I am a Water Dragon in the Chinese calendar. I love that!
My baby pictures show a chubby, bald baby girl who is sprouting fine, blond hair. Mom said she taped a little bow on my bald head so people would know I was a girl.
I remember things.............my crib under a window in my parent's bedroom. Screaming for my mother when I was standing in the crib. My mother rushing into the room calling,
"I'm here, I'm here. I was frying bacon and didn't hear you"
That's a strong memory and I'm amazed it's so vivid..
Playing in water. Summers were hot on Long Island and of course there was no air-conditioning in those years so my mother would fill cooking pots full of water from the hose and I would play and splash and put my feet in them to cool off.
When my father came home from work he would take the hose and water down our stucco house to try and cool it off a little inside. I don't know if it worked.
At about 4 years old, being taken to the 'hospital' which to me seemed like a house with a dining room table with a big light over it and being given ether and having my tonsils out. Remembering a metal crib and having ice cream.
Later in life finding out that was the local general hospital.
My father driving Mom, my brother Bob and me to Caanan Lake in Patchogue where Aunt Helen Berg, my father's sister and her husband had a 'summer house'. Dad and Uncle Artie would come out on the weekends and the Moms and kids would spend the week there. There were bubbling creeks and the lake and lots of woods and blueberries, a, rain barrels to catch water to wash our hair, pump for water at the kitchen sink AND AN OUTHOUSE! That always felt scary because I was so small and the outhouse hole underneath the structure was SO DEEP! Either my brother or my mother would go with me. My brother would wait right outside. That felt so protective.
Going on a train with the family to Silven Pines in East Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania. A friend of my mother's sister, also an Aunt Helen owned the big house and we could stay there. My brother and I walking on the flagstone path around this big house. My brother suddenly grabbing my hand and yelling
"Snake!"
I was immediately aloft in the air in my little plaid dress as he took off with me to the front of the house. I think I remember a very big, very long black snake undulating in the woods next to us but who knows. I just remember my brother running with me and I felt like a kite! We laugh about it today!
Another trip to Patchogue and running and tripping, falling directly onto my stomach on a tree stump. I felt o.k. but the next day my stomach swelled up as though I was a 4 year old pregnant child. We didn't have a car there and it was very rural at that time. No phone. My Dad was due out in another day so Mom and Aunt Helen watched that nothing else was happening and then we went home at the end of the week. Everything seemed normal. There is a picture of me with that huge stomach.
Kindergarten and seeing my next door neighbor, Laura, come into the room to give the teacher a message from her teacher. she was one of the older girls. I was so glad to see her. I had just been chastised for starting my tulip picture before everyone else.
Sitting outside on the curb at home watching the kids play but too tired to join in. Constantly rushing inside to the bathroom.
Going to Dr. Gallagher the general practitioner in town and being told I needed a specialist.
Being taken to Dr. Peter V. Gugliuzza, who had just opened an office in Bellerose on Jamaica Avenue. He was just out of the
U.S. Army and when I was put up on the table for an examination, he said (my mother told me later),
"Take off her shirt". (He was used to handling soldiers.
Upon examining me, he told my parents he strongly suspected I had diabetes. They didn't know that much about diabetes in the 1940's so were a bit hostile when Dr. Gugliuzza said I should go to the hospital (Mom told me these things as I grew up )
My parents talked about it at home and then refused to believe hospitalization was necessary. They had lost one son, Ronnie, to a traffic accident before I was born and were afraid of losing another child.
My mother told me that upon their refusal to address the issue, Dr. Gugliuzza said,
"If you decide to ignore this, you will become her murderers."
What a wise doctor. He saved my life. I was about to be 5 years old.
Next : Sweet Black Crows.
No comments:
Post a Comment