A routine check up at the family doctor. I bent over and touched my toes, as he ran his fingers along my spine. Something wasn't right. I was really young to start developing scoliosis and my parents should take me to get it looked at further.
The Ronald McDonald house, before we checked into the hospital. I had a lot of fun there, actually. A family down the hallway bought me a cassette tape player so that I could play the Reba McIntyre tape that my neighbors had gotten me before we left. Their son was five years older than me, and didn't have any hair. My dad bought me a necklace right before we left, one of those with the little clay animals that all the kids had when I was younger. It was an elephant, and by the time I'd left the hospital its ears and trunk had fallen off.
The waiting room before surgery. The nurse came in, she was young and pretty and smiled the whole time. She had a stack of Disney movies and asked me what I'd like to watch before I went in. I chose Aladdin. My mom and dad came in a kissed me, my dad doing a lot better job of holding the tears back. And then I was sleeping...
I woke up to blurry doctors and blurry parents. The tumor was gone, they told me; not removed, just gone. My parents were thrilled. I was groggy. Reality set in when the nurses lifted me from my surgery bed and my body lit on fire. My parents held my hand and told me how proud they were and how well I'd done, smiling with red and puffy eyes. I didn't smile back.
And I kept not smiling for weeks. My dad stayed every night with me, sleeping in a chair at night, spending the days reading and singing and trying to bring me back. But he was the one who let them hurt me. He was the one who kept letting them poke me and move me around. One day a nurse came in and I said something mean to her. I can't remember the words, but something vicious, something to get her to leave me alone. When she left my dad pulled his chair to my bedside and looked me in the eyes. "I know you hurt and you're angry, and its not fair. But you do not get to treat people like that. She's only trying to help you."
My dad borrowed some colored markers and stole a stack of paper cups. He spent the afternoon making a collection of puppets, and after dinner he knelt by the side of my bed and put on a show. Finally, I laughed.
The doctors had said I wouldn't walk again for at least a year, but as soon as my back started healing my dad got me up and moving. The first time my feet touched the ground they felt rounded. I teetered back and forth like I was standing on spinning tops. Before we'd left, I'd just started riding a bike, and now my feet felt like foriegn objects. I spent every day wandering the halls of the hospital, one hand gripping the rail along the wall, the other holding my dad, listening to the sound of the other children crying in their rooms.
I was on my way home in six months.
I can't guarentee the complete accuracy of these memories, I was barely five after all. But ultimately, the memories were probably more formative than the reality.
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