I am BRAVE

A person that found me online, a man who I went to school with from first through eighth grade at Visitation school. He said he remembers me in second grade when I was in a wheelchair. I have long forgetten most of my childhood but remembered instantly when he said!

Amazing what others remember about you!

True, I was in a wheelchair in Mrs Kopecky's class. Not at home though, for some reason my Dad carried me into the principals office and then I was pushed in a really old wheel chair to my classroom. Dad said the wheel chair is special because it was from the war. I missed a lot of school in second grade because I was in Cook County hospital.

Cook was (is?) a hospital for the poor. I was in a ward and slept with other poor children. This was my first experience with minorities, though I think the only minority in my room was black (now African-American). I recall being mad that I was in a bed with rail all around it, like a crib, I was a big girl and didn't want to be in a crib.

My parents could not visit every day but the black girl in the bed next to mine had visitors all the time and they would talk to me. My bed was close to a window and the visitors stood and talked to me with light from the window behind them, like an angel. They brought food for their daughter and sometimes gave me juice, they were so very kind. I was scared and took everything in - the stiff sheets that smelled like bleech, the footies over the shoes of the doctors, the cold cage around me.

The doctors came in groups and stood around me looking down where I lay. They touched me below my belly button and mostly hip to hip. I couldn't have understood at such a young age but I had multiple hernias. Today I have a faint hip to hip scar.

When I was wheeled for surgery I was in a room with many people and very bright lights, it was very scarey. A nurse held my hand and told me to think of puppies and kittens. My Dad told me this would happen and he told me that when the nurse holds my hand to look up and I will see my guardian angel and go to sleep. I remembered what my Dad said and I looked up instead of thinking of puppies and kittens, I squinted in the bright light to see my guardian angel and made out a mystical outline of her before falling asleep.

Only my Dad was there when I awoke. My mouth was dry but I was so eager to tell him that my guardian angel was there with me, just as he said she would be!

I spent more time in the hospital recovering. The nurses would wheel me through the halls and gave me a tour of the hospital. I got to go to the hospital laundry and see where the stiff, strong smelling sheets came from! The girl who lay next to me left with her big family before me and she missed the trip to the laundry room, oh which also included an elevator ride.

When I returned to Mrs. Kopecky's class I could not sit Indian-style (now called Criscross Applesauce or Pretzel). I had to sit with my legs outstretched before me without bending my knees because I felt pain on the ends of the scar if I tried to sit like everyone else. I wanted to climb trees but couldn't. So young to be so different, it made difference acceptable to me and I learned to embrace it.

My myspace former classmate recalls that I went in the hospital, he recalls that the class prayed for me every morning! He recalls that my face would squish with pain when I tried to sit like everyone else. He said he thought I was brave.

Huh, I never knew anyone thought that of me, I thought others just thought I was odd but I was wrong. He was right, I was brave.