Friday, July 16, 1937

My 12th Birthday!

I was sick for two days. I'm feeling better now, but Mother says I have to rest one more day, so I can't have my afternoon birthday tea. I started to cry and Mother said not to be silly and that I could have it next week and we'd pretend it was my birthday all over again. She felt my forehead for fever so many times in the last two days my head is still aching.

I did have a fever, too, and my legs and back were aching. Mother said I had heatstroke.

I'm lying on the old couch in the screened front porch while writing this so I can get a bit of air. It smells. The couch, I mean, not the air. Mother and Grandpa are in the kitchen. We finally got some rain today, though Grandpa told Mother it was not enough to save the crops. We haven't had a good harvest in four years. Grandpa said it was because we're a one-crop province — wheat — and when the bottom went out of the market for wheat (I'm not sure what bottom he means) there were no other crops to fall back on, so we ended up in the sorry position we're in now. Grandpa said that the population of Saskatoon has gone down instead of up because people are moving East looking for work.

I'm too tired to write any more. Grandpa says I should do some reading as it wouldn't tire me out. I'm not too fond of reading, except my favourite book, Heidi.

Friday, July 30, 1937

In the hospital.

It has been a long time since I wrote in here. A nurse brought my diary to me today. Grandpa had given it to her. She told me to call her Nurse Betty. He also gave her a message for me — that words can be friends when you are lonely, and that writing your fears down, seeing them written on paper, makes the fears lessen. I think Grandpa made Nurse Betty memorize that part, because she almost sounded like him. I miss him and Edmund and Mother and Dad so much. They are not allowed to see me because I am in the isolation ward, which is an entirely separate building from the regular hospital. It's to keep our germs from spreading around.

Saturday, July 31, 1937

All the nurses and doctors wear masks so only their eyes show. One time when I was very sick, I thought they were ghosts and screamed because I thought I was dead.

There are two regular nurses here; Nurse Betty is nice, but Nurse Winter is crabby. The hospital smells of medicine, food and poop (I'm not supposed to say that word but my diary is secret). I'm scared here. I can't write anymore because my arms are too tired. I have to hold the book over my head and my right arm shakes so much I can't write properly.

Sunday, August 1, 1937

I have polio.

The day I came to the hospital, an old doctor who has big black eyebrows like caterpillars made grumpy Nurse Winter roll me up on my side, and then he stuck a needle in my back. It hurt very badly. I had to lie completely still afterwards.

The needle was to take spinal fluid to test for polio, so that's how they know I have it. Nurse Betty told me I'm over the worst of the initial illness, but I'm still really scared. Mother and Aunt Ella have a school friend who had polio and she is crippled and has to lie in bed all day because she can't walk. Others who've had it have to use crutches. People can die from polio!

Maybe if I say the word polio enough times, it won't be so scary. I think I'll have to say it a lot, though.

Mother and Dad were finally allowed to see me today, though it was through the door's glass window because I am still in the isolation ward at the City Hospital and Nurse Winter said they couldn't come in to see me directly, because they might catch my disease. I was going to tell her that Dad had carried me into the hospital and Mother had held me in Grandpa's car, and they hadn't gotten polio, but I thought that was saucy, so I didn't. My legs hurt so bad at times, it makes me cry. The muscles in my back get all hard and it makes me curve my back. My right arm is getting better, but it still took me ALL day just to write this!

Monday, August 2, 1937

Here is a secret I'm not supposed to know: I just overheard the caterpillar-eyebrow doctor tell Nurse Betty that I am paralyzed from the waist down.

Afternoon

I am so scared. My legs don't move one bit, and my toes don't wiggle, though I try and try to make them. They also hurt terribly. It feels like all my leg bones are held together with tight wire. The caterpillar doctor ran a tongue depressor down the sole of my foot and even that hurt! I wonder why I can feel the tongue depressor, yet my legs won't move. I keep telling my brain to move my legs, but they won't.

Night-time

I can't sleep because there is a small boy in here with me, named Eugene, who also has polio and he is having trouble breathing. I keep getting scared he'll stop. There is a woman here too, who I think has polio, but I don't know her name. She has screens around her bed all the time. It's very lonely in here. I miss Mother and Dad, Grandpa and James and Edmund and Bessie. I'm so scared I'm going to die.


From Dear Canada: To Stand On My Own, copyright © 2010 by Barbara Haworth-Attard.

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