Doctors and Sickness

When my siblings and I were sick with various childhood diseases, it was usually at the same time. I'm sure my older brother and sister brought the diseases home from school where they spread through the entire family, even infecting my mother and father at times.

We suffered through measles, chicken pox, scarletina, mumps, pneumonia and meningitis before I was seven years old. My father always blamed it on the germs hiding in the crevices of our old house which was at one time a schoolhouse. He said with all those sick kids mingling together in one room it would be natural for the walls to be permeated with sickness. Whatever it was, my poor mother had from two to six kids to care for each time, and at one time, my father, too. When we all got sick with scarletina, both my parents got sick. My mother always claimed she and my father were sick at different times so at least one of them felt well enough to care for the others. I'm not sure I believe that. Of course besides all these sicknesses, we were also infected with cold and flu viruses. I can't imagine what they went through.

When I was seven, we moved to a different town and all of us were exposed to a different set of infections. Those of us who didn't get sick with mumps, chicken pox and pneumonia  the first time got them this time. I remember my younger siblings and I being sick with mumps at the same time. I then caught a cold which developed into pneumonia and my older brother managed to get sick, too. This was his second time with pneumonia. My younger brother escaped chicken pox the first time but he caught it the second time. Again, my mother bore the brunt of the care.

In those days doctors made house calls. We lived in small towns and everyone knew each other. The doctor in the first town was a crotchety old guy, but he managed to find the way to cure my younger sister of meningitis when none of the big city doctors at the hospital could. She almost died. He also attended all of us at home when we were sick with the other diseases. In the second town our doctor was a member of our church and lived just down the hill from us. He also made house calls. One time when I was trying out my brother's brand-new birthday scooter and managed to fall and put a big gash just below my right knee, he drove to our house, inspected the damage, and then loaded my older sister and I into his car and took me back to his office for stitches. I guess he knew I would need someone to hold my hand and my sister was available. He also was the doctor who removed my tonsils. I can still remember him explaining about the ether mask and telling me to count backwards after he put it over my mouth and nose. The orangey smell is still with me.

My parents must have run up quite a medical bill in both towns, but no one that I knew of had insurance, so the doctors let them pay in installments. Even the hospitals used the installment plan for the births of myself and my younger siblings, and also for the time my sister was sick with meningitis. I don't know what they would have done otherwise.