A stubborn madam - that was me 52 years ago!

1960/61 The weeks turned into months, with the daily insertion of longer and longer needles to see if there was any residual feeling. No stimuli worked. Neither hot nor cold nor needles. On a monthly visit from my parents in the February, the surgeons came to the bedside to speak to my Mum & Dad. He looked, for the first time since the October, terribly serious and sombre. Up to then, he had always been optimistic with me. Now, the words came slowly, like a death sentence. ‘I am so very sorry’ he started ‘ I’m‘I’m afraid she is really a lost cause. We’ve tried everything we know how to try, and then a few more things, but there is nothing else. I’m afraid she won’t ever walk again.’ ‘What about her dancing?’ came the preposterous question from my father, totally oblivious to the consequences of the words the Surgeon had just spoken. ‘And tennis? She loves tennis’ he asked in desperation. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry,sorry; there will be nothing like that for her again.’ The surgeon replied. Turning to me he said again ‘I’m really sorry, my dear, but there is an end to every road, and this is the end of this one. You will be discharged next week, once we have had time to make all the arrangements’ He then added a few words which sustained me for years to come. ‘You would have been such an asset to the WRAF and your spirit is beyond reproach. Maybe one day you will learn to forgive us for the awful mistake we made’. With that, he left the ward, and my life in tatters again. My parents were devastated. They didn’t have any way of expressing what they were thinking, so they left without trying to express anything at all. As soon as they had gone, I asked to be released from the traction. It was obviously doing no good, and was very uncomfortable, so there was no need now, to keep on with the treatment. I lay in that bed and I formed my natural stubbornness into some emotion I felt I could use. The following morning, I asked if they would help me to stand up. I had been in bed for almost five months from October until February. It had not occurred to me how weak I would feel. After a lot of persuasion, I was lifted gently to the side of my bed. As if in slow motion, instead of being able to stand, as I was so sure I could do if allowed to try, I just slid down onto the floor. The nurses thought that I would now accept my paralysis. I would not. Not for a second. No, I couldn’t actually feel my legs, but neither did I have any pain. Over the course of the next three days, I tried dozens of times to stand, supported by a couple of nurses, propped up against my bed. Finally, on the Friday, she managed to stand for a couple of minutes. That was all I needed to know. I now would be able to go home, and know, deep down inside me, that I could teach myself to walk again. It may take me a long time, but time was something I had a plenty of. Determination I possessed by the ton. Likewise, my stubbornness, if I wanted to achieve something badly enough, I would do it come what may. Well, I wanted to prove the doctors wrong, and I would do it, however long it would take me. They drove home in silence. I had to face starting my life again.

Arriving home, the major obstacle was getting to my bedroom. I’d not thought about having to climb stairs. A bed had been brought down into the drawing room for me, the same drawing room where my bed had been during my bout of rheumatic fever, all those years ago. This time, I was not going to sleep in the drawing room again. I saw it as some sort of defeat, and this time I was going to win. Insisting that if someone could help me to get to the foot of the staircase, I would get up it somehow, I plonked myself on my bottom on the lowest step. With immense strain, I put my hands either side of me and pushed until I lifted myself to the next step. This continued until I reached the sixteenth and top step. Now, there was the long landing to negotiate. Not giving in, I simply hauled myself along it until I got to my old bedroom, and with the last burst of energy I possessed, got onto my bed. I’d made it. Yes, it had taken a little over an hour and a half. I didn’t care if it had taken me a day and a half; I had achieved the impossible. My parents didn’t believe I would manage it, but when my father returned from work, he was amazed to find me, not in the bed in the drawing room, but upstairs in my bedroom., where I had all my collection of beer mats on the wall, my old ball gowns and dance dresses in the wardrobe and my photo of my airman by my bed. I was so pleased with myself. For a couple of days, I was content just to be in my bedroom. I managed to shuffle to the bathroom on my bottom, and to enjoy, to my total joy and delight, a long, warm soak in the bath. How I had longed for that. I also discovered that with my legs in the warm water, I was able to begin to move them a tiny fraction. There had been no after-care arranged for me, so if I were to learn to use my legs again, I would just have to do it myself. I worked out that if I could spend an hour in the bath two or three times a day, I would get got more and more sensation back in my legs. My feet were still numb, but now, very occasionally, I was sure I felt the pins and needles in them. This was a big advance, because I just knew that if there were pins and needles, eventually there would be feeling. How I worked on myself over the next few weeks no one would ever know. I would not rest – except if someone was around to see me. I hated anyone to witness my frustration with myself, so just sat passive if there was anyone around. Since the house was empty of all but my mother most of the time, I had ample time to do my exercises in complete secrecy. Eventually, after a couple of months of incredibly intensive work, I was able to stand unaided. I even took a couple of steps from my bed to my dressing table. Then to my wardrobe. I looked at the beautiful gowns hanging there. Recalling how I had danced in them, and been admired by my escorts, I just became even stronger in my resolve. My brother was getting married in a month’s time. His bride had asked me to be a bridesmaid before all the events of the last six months and I had been so thrilled. Even my dress had been made in readiness. It was Sunshine yellow satin. I hated the colour, but it was the bride’s choice, so it was accepted. Now I had little more than a month to get to the point where I could wear it, and walk down the aisle behind my sister-in-law to be. Of course, the family had resigned themselves to me not being able to be a bridesmaid. No-one gave it a second thought, and no-one mentioned it, as a courtesy to me, and no-one wanted to hurt me more than they thought I was hurting already. Little by little, and overcoming ache after ache, I practiced. I could now walk, albeit terribly slowly and haltingly, to the bathroom. Of course, I had been upstairs the whole time, and now I felt I had to try to get down the staircase again. I got myself to the top step, and the stairs took on the proportions of a mountainside. Sitting myself on the top step, I bumped my way down them. Easy. No problem at all. Now I turned myself around, and managed to lift my first leg high enough to allow my foot to get on the bottom step. Pull up on the banister with my arms, and try lifting the left leg. No. It wouldn’t move. It just hung there like dead meat. I slumped down onto my bottom, angry with myself, but more determined than ever. Right. Stand up again. Right leg up, onto step. OK. Arms onto banister and pull up. This time, I nearly got my left leg to clear the step, but not quite enough. Again, I slumped down. I was alone in the house, and so knew I could just keep on trying and trying for as long as I liked. Had there been anyone else there, they would have told me to give up and just go up the stairs on my bottom, but I had the house to myself, and I was jolly well going to work at it. Again and again, and then, as if someone was helping me, up came my left leg enough to reach onto the first step. At last. I had succeeded in climbing one stair! Only another fifteen to go. It took me two hours, but in the end, I fell, exhausted, on the top step and half on the landing. The tears fell then. I knew again that I would conquer my legs. Even if they would not take me where they had taken me in the past, dancing or walking with my brother over the Derbyshire moors and hills, they could be made to be of use to me. And moreover, I hadn’t resorted to a wheel chair, and that was a huge achievement. I had been so determined to do all this work secretly, because I felt that if they saw me doing the exercises and failing so many times, they would just lose patience with me and tell me to give up and accept the verdict of the surgeon.