Playing Doctor

Some kids play house or school. I played hospital. I remember that this was something that I did on my own, without other kids. We had an old metal baby-doll crib with sides that went up and down that made a perfect hospital bed. So it was there that baby Tender-Love tm (I cannot recall her name, probably because my mother always suggested names for my dolls and it never occurred to me that I could choose one on my own) spent many a day and night ‘recovering’. She had lots of surgeries and even more casts.

Ah the casts. It took me a long time to get the formula for the casts just right. First I tried strips of Kleenex in baby powder and water. That was a bust. The baby powder just floated on top of the water and would never create a paste. Then I tried just using wet Kleenex-but that just became a mess of wadded up wet tissues. Finally it was a combination of flour water and paper towels that did the trick. It took awhile to create the casts as all of the ingredients had to be obtained when no one was looking (in other words 'stolen') The water was the easiest to obtain. The paper towel a bit trickier, as I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that there might be a mess to clean up (why else would I need a paper towel?) But still the paper towels were easier then the flour.

The flour was kept in a tin way up on a shelf above the stove. Getting the flour required moving the stool over to the stove and then climbing on top of the stove top to get the canister down. The next trick was to get the lid off with out making any noise or without getting flour everywhere. Somehow I managed to get it all accomplished and downstairs I went to cast her up. That poor doll had casts from head to toe. (Funny, I don't recall if they ever dried or how I got them off. Certainly not a saw like they used in the hospital on me!)

When she had casts on both legs then the iv bottle could be hooked up as well. This was a ingenious invention, if I do say so myself, of an empty glass medicine bottle, telephone wire, and a sewing needle with an eye big enough to get the wire through . Once the wire was secured to the bottle and the needle attached to the wire than the everything was ready and the iv could be inserted. Yes, it’s true that poor doll not only was bound in plaster but now she would have needle stuck into her arm as well. By the end of that dolls career as a professional patient she had more track marks then a junkie on Burnside. I'm not sure that doll ever recovered.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why I played hospital with my dolls and animals. I spent much of my childhood in and out of various body casts. Sometimes there were surgeries involved, other times it was simply traction and then casts. (hmmm, and I wondered why that full body mud wrap at that fancy spa led to an anxiety attack) In between the surgeries, tests, casts, doctor visits and wheel-chair rides I did my best to be a 'normal' kid. But, just about the time I got back into the swing of it...childhood... there be a "new" procedure awaiting me and I'd loose traction (no pun intended) and it would be months before I could be 'normal' again.

Normal... who needs it? Not me...not now. :-)