Summer 1952

60 years ago I spent the summer in the hospital.  I remember it well.  The food was pretty bad.  It was my first - and last - taste of tongue; I can still see the hairs sticking out of it.  By and large, the nurses were friendly and helpful.  Despite the anesthetics and pain killers, the pain was pretty intense for the first couple of weeks after the operation, which, by the way, was written up in some obscure medical journal.  I particularly remember the pain when, a few weeks after the operation, the surgeon removed a piece of metal holding my foot in place.  His healing and human qualities were non-existent.  He was a doctor of the old school who knew everything and could never be wrong.  

I still wonder who should have received the copy of “The Caine Mutiny” that I read that summer.  I was not a good patient; my mother had to take time off from visiting me.  Coincidentally, she spent some time on Martha’s Vineyard, where thirty years later we, my wife and I, bought a house.  What effect did that hospital stay have on my life? 

It was not my first hospital stay or first operation.  I had been operated on three times when I was an infant.  Despite these infant experiences, my journey through childhood and the early teen years was relatively uneventful and common.  I played all the sports that my schoolmates did.  Surprisingly, I was an average athlete until I reached my teens.  But, I was a different child and was quite aware of that.  

Clearly, my physical condition was part of that difference; after all, I have worn a prosthesis for as long as I can remember.  Plus, I was small, I weighed less than 60 pounds when I graduated from grammar school.  I was always the youngest, smallest and smartest kid in my class.  

When I left the hospital, I was struck by how close together the houses were in my neighborhood.  I had lost a sense of perspective.  But was that all I had lost that summer?  Or, had I gained something?  Had I moved into the beginning of adulthood? Until that summer I was truly a spoiled brat.  And you can understand why.  I was the youngest child and a handicapped child who was not expected to walk.  It was quite natural that my parents satisfied most of my requests.  That summer I realized – hazily, not in a very deep way - that my request to be ‘normal’ in a physical sense was not going to be satisfied then or for the rest of my life.  And so began the journey to adulthood.

(Why do I feel a need to write this?  Am I reaching an age when I just have to put down something that says I am different, I am a person to whom attention must be paid.  But that’s what Mrs. Loman said about Willy and that is not how I want to be remembered.  Should I delete this post?)