By James E. Kerns

14 May 2006

 

It was dull lying there in the hospital bed.  Margie had only been in Portland for three days, but to a twelve-year-old girl, it seemed like forever.  Margie's mother was with her, sitting beside her bed; but Margie missed her home, her daddy, her brothers and sisters, school, and playing in the back yard.

Just a few days ago she'd been back in Baker, feeling fine, and without a care in the world.  Her parents had taken her to Dr. Kostol.  He made them take her to a doctor in Boise the next day.  That doctor made an appointment for her with another doctor in Portland for the following day.  Then the day after that she was hospitalized and operated on.  Her hair was shaved off the left half of her head, her head was in a cast, and a 20-pound sandbag was lying across her neck to keep her from moving.

This is where Margie would lie for three weeks!  She couldn't roll over.  She couldn't move.  She couldn't even go to the bathroom.  There wasn't a TV to watch.  She was too weak to read, and couldn't get interested in books.  It was so boring to just lie there, but there was nothing else to do.

Only three things relieved Margie's boredom.  One was the little transistor radio that her father had bought for her to listen to.  Another was the fact that she had a roommate.  Margie really liked the first girl that they put in the bed next to hers.  She was getting plastic surgery to remove some horrible scars on her face.  Margie's mother and the girl's mother got to be very good friends, but the girl left after a week.

Then another girl was put in that bed.  She was scary.  She'd tried to commit suicide.  She said something very upsetting to Margie.  Margie told her mother what the girl had said, and in a little while the girl was moved out.

The radio and the roommates helped to relieve the boredom, but the daily letter from Lola Eardley was what Margie looked forward to.  Each day a card would arrive containing a riddle for Margie to think about that day.  The next day another card would come with another riddle and the answer to the previous day's riddle.  It wasn't much, but any interruption to the boring routine was welcome.

Margie wasn't in pain.  Her father had given her a priesthood blessing before the surgery.  Margie didn't remember much about the blessing except that she heard what she was listening for.  She'd been most worried about pain.  The blessing said that she'd experience no pain, and she never did.  That was in spite of the fact that the tumors had been wrapped around her jugular vein, in spite of the fact that the doctors had made a huge hole in her neck, and in spite of the fact that she'd had to have a large skin graft, with skin removed from her hip to cover the hole in her neck. She was uncomfortable having to lie in just one position all day every day, but she was experiencing no pain.  Margie was grateful.

Events leading up to her surgery had been upsetting.  She was sitting in her sixth grade class one day when her teacher had almost screamed, rushed over to her, and asked why she was bleeding.  Margie hadn't known that she was bleeding.  Her blouse was soaked with blood.  The teacher ushered her out into the hall, and began dabbing at her neck.  The principal came and applied pressure, which finally got the bleeding stopped.  They called Margie's mother, and sent her home.

There were other episodes.  Initially there were three little bumps on Margie's neck.  Her mother thought that Margie had probably scraped one with her comb, but Margie didn't think she'd done anything to cause the bleeding.  In the seventh grade, she was taken to the doctor, who removed the bumps, stitched her up, and told her to come back in two weeks to have the stitches removed.

When it came time to have the stitches removed, Margie's mother looked at her neck and gasped.  Where there had been three bumps before, there were now dozens.  That's when Dr. Kostol sent her to Boise, and that's how she'd ended up lying in a hospital bed in Portland.  The tumors were benign, but they were fast-growing and dangerous because of their location.

Margie's recovery was slow.  She spent three weeks and Christmas in the hospital, and then several days at her sister's home in Portland.  Back home in Baker she was as weak as a kitten.  When she returned to school the attendance person said, "Oh, I was just going to drop you today.  You've reached the 30-day limit for days missed."

Margie attended half days for some time, and went home totally exhausted.  Somehow, though, she kept up with her work, slowly regained her strength, moved along with her classmates to the next grade, fully recovered, and lived happily ever after.

One of the biggest problems that she had during her recovery was that half of her head was shaved, and the other half had long hair reaching almost to her shoulder.  The night before the surgery, just before she went to sleep, they had come into her hospital room with scissors, cut all the hair from the left side of her head, and then used a straight-edge razor to shave that side of her head bald.

What to do about Margie’s hair became a major problem when she got back home.  Hairdos were experimented with.  Margie’s sister came up with one where she twirled the long hair from the good side of her head around to the other side to cover the bald half.  It looked pretty good, but there was no way to hold the hair in that position for very long since there was nothing to pin it to on that side of her head.  Finally Margie’s mother went upstairs and came back down with the hair that was Margie’s ponytail that had been cut off when she was in the fourth grade.  Margie’s mother had saved it.

Margie’s mother laid a shoelace on the table, straightened the hair out, and laid the cut edge of the hair over the shoelace.  She then folded the shoelace back over the hair, and sewed the hair to the shoelace.  Margie now had a hairpiece that was made from her own hair.  The shoelace gave the hairpiece something with which to pin it to Margie’s hair.  It worked very well, but Margie couldn’t wait for her hair to grow out again.  She kept cutting her hair shorter and shorter until finally the new hair on the shaved side of her head matched the length of the hair on the unshaved side of her head.  She then considered herself fully recovered.

It was an expensive operation, however.  Many years later Margie discovered the bill that her father received and paid.  The operation and the three weeks in the hospital cost him $450!