In these days of the coronavirus, every cough and every ache or pain makes us fearful. At least, that’s how I’m feeling these days. Spring is coming regardless of the pandemic, and I try to take solace in the warmer days, the brilliant sunshine, the greening of trees and lawns. But sometimes my thoughts take darker turns, and I remember past illnesses.
I haven’t been sick to take note of in a couple of years. It’s been about that long since I had a significant cold. And I think my last serious stomach virus was in late January 2013, just before my daughter broke her leg skiing and I had to rush to Vancouver, BC, to get her back to her home and take care of her.
I’ve been fortunate in my health through my life with very few illnesses worth talking about. But I do remember one very early time when I was miserably ill. I was only three or four at the time. As I recall, it was summer and we lived in Corvallis, Oregon. If those memories are true, it was 1960 when I was four, because we didn’t move to Corvallis until September 1959. But I think I was younger—only three—and if it was the summer of 1959, then we still lived in Richland, Washington. Or maybe it wasn’t summer—maybe I just remember feeling warm because I was so feverish.
Oh, well, I suppose those facts don’t really matter. What is firmly etched in my mind is the fever. I don’t remember the other symptoms—I think I had a sore throat, I think I was sick to my stomach, but it was the fever that remains indelibly printed in my memory. I couldn’t do anything except lie on the couch all day. My younger brother had it also, but I was so sick I don’t remember anything about his symptoms, only my own.
I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything except water and boiled milk. Those restrictions probably only lasted two or three days, but they seemed to my young mind to go on forever. As an adult, I can understand the water to keep me hydrated, but why boiled milk? Our milk was pasteurized milk, so the boiling couldn’t have been to get rid of germs. As a self-centered child, I thought the rule about boiling milk was designed to make me even sicker than I was.
My father detested being around sick people. He was always afraid of catching the bug himself. He refused to be in the same room as a child with the “epizootic.” So caring for my brother and me fell squarely on my mother. She’s the one I remember arguing with over drinking boiled milk. She tried to get me to drink it, but it tasted terrible, and I refused. And for those days that the doctor prescribed water or boiled milk, I only drank water. I wasn’t fond of drinking plain water either, but that’s all I was offered. I was so glad when the doctor finally said I could have regular milk. Finally, some food I could tolerate. And I seem to recall being fed rice and other easy to digest foods as well.
As a side note, as I wrote this post, I looked up the definition of “epizootic.” In my family, it was always used as a humorous term referring to an illness with severely unpleasant symptoms, but it didn’t mean anything specific. But according to Merriam-Webster, an epizootic has a formal definition—“an outbreak of disease affecting many animals of one kind at the same time.” The coronavirus is apparently a true epizootic. And there’s nothing humorous about it.
What do you remember about childhood illnesses?
As a child, I was often ill with a high fever. During a particular summer (probably 1954) I came down with one of those episodes. The doctor came to the house. My parents huddled at my bedroom door when the doctor announced, “If her fever doesn’t break by morning, it’s polio.”
It did break by morning. My friend was not so fortunate. She spent the summer in KU Hospital, learning how to stick her finger down her throat in order to swallow. She spoke with a nasal tone ever after. The polio settled in her throat.
Sally, I’ve been thinking that the polio epidemics of the mid-1950s were the last time we got this concerned about a disease. I wasn’t around then, but it was a scary time for those who were.
Theresa
Measles. I must have been around 7 or 8, maybe. At the time there was no vaccine but there was something that reportedly lessened the impact. Looking back on it, it might have been some sort of trial, but in any case my mom did het best to get me exposed to diseases that granted future immunity, so I got this shot, then we waited for the measles to appear. And they did, with a vengeance. I similarly recall only the fever and how terrible I felt, and my mom saying if this was a “milder” case, the full blown thing must be awful. I wish people today had memory of those childhood diseases, because they would be less dismissive of vaccinating their kids. Some lessons we seem to need to re-learn.
Linda, I missed the measles, but had chickenpox and mumps — light cases of both, thankfully. All these scourges were a normal part of childhood until vaccines. It’s easy to think we can conquer disease, but we will always be playing catch-up. Another lesson we need to re-learn.
Theresa