"Don't Go Smelling Like a Rabbit"

Chapter Five.

As I’ve said, I was sick a lot as a child. I was born with a bronchial tube too small leading into one lung.

I also had an inguinal hernia that was repaired when I was one.

I remember being in the hospital for that operation. I remember the pain when I stood up in my crib. And I remember being very confused about the pain. I knew it wasn't a regular sensation between my legs. I don’t actually remember being aware that I was going to have an operation, though.

I firmly believe children, even babies, understand far more than they're given credit for.

For instance, if I'd been told, in simple terms, that I had a hernia and that they were going to operate on it to make it better, I believe I would have been able to understand on a rudimentary level.

I had pneumonia countless times as a child and was in and out of almost every hospital in Dallas my first few years. I was told I had so much penicillin pumped into me I developed an immunity to it.

As I aged, I remember choosing sites in my butt for the daily injections.

Dr. Lewis Alday was my favorite doctor. He called me, and all his patients I later learned, Skipper.

I named my dog Skipper. There was only one of him.

As a result of the a.m.’s mental affliction (the Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome), I was in and out of school a lot during my early years, too. She'd keep me home on the basis of a sniffle. I'd go to school for a week, clear my sinuses a little too noisily one night, and be kept at home for a week or two.

Needless to say I never developed many people skills.

The a.m. would always be telling people how worried she was about my health and how she was always thinking of only me and my well being. And how she suffered with me through all of it.

Meanwhile, it was Gramma who sat with me for hours on end while I was bedridden. We played the usual games like checkers, "I Spy", "Old Maid" and "Go Fish". Day in and day out for weeks, throughout my growing up years.

Where'd the a.m. go? Who knows?

Out. She didn’t have a job. Her income came from properties she’d inherited or bought. One of which was 1308 Main Street, downtown Dallas, beneath the Adolphus Hotel.

Visiting?

I was never told.

She’d be gone for hours on end.

But, at the hospitals, or in the Doctor's offices, she'd put on a better show than the Metropolitan Opera.

She'd demand an extra bed be put next to mine so she could spend the night with me in the hospital.

But when they'd come in to drain my lungs, or do a procedure of some sort, or pump me full of drugs to cure whatever disease I was “suffering” from at the time, she was nowhere to be found.

She’d tell me she’d be back soon, and just leave.

I was a scared little kid who needed a soft bosom to snuggle into or a hand to hold but she was shopping or visiting or whatever she did while they "abused" me in the hospital.

If you think some medical treatment isn't a form of child abuse, you've got another think coming.

Here's the scenario. This woman said I was sick and needed treatment. They'd have to examine me to find out what was wrong and if nothing was immediately apparent, she’d demand they do tests. Any and all they, and she, could think of.

And she always thought of something.

Where else can you take a little child and do horribly painful scream-inducing procedures and experiments and get away with it? All at the whim of an over-protective parent.

A child doesn't know from "this is good for you...it'll make you feel better" and sheer terror. It's legalized torture. It may save a life, or prolong the time of torturing, but the mental scars remain.

Throughout my young life she would constantly remind me how "they wanted to cut out one of your lungs, but I wouldn't let them! You'd be dead today if they had done that to you. But I wouldn't let them! ‘Over my dead body’, I told them".

But often hours before a procedure was scheduled she'd be nowhere in sight: out of earshot of a terrified tyke crying his heart out as they shoved tubes into lung cavities to pump out the sputum.

It was a power trip. She could tell all her friends how she'd stood up for her little boy against the big mean doctors.

I never met a doctor who told me they'd considered removing a lung.

As I’ve said, they hadn’t described Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome, also called Facetious Disorder by Proxy, at the time. That came later in 1951 when a Dr. Richard Asher adopted it to explain self-induced illnesses.

That's what she had.

Von Munchausen's Syndrome is where people actually make themselves ill or invent illnesses to gain attention from the medical community.

The "By Proxy" form is where the illnesses are created by parents, most often by the mothers, in their children, so the parent can be considered exceptionally caring and a martyr for the constant concern and dedication to their long suffering wards.

Dr. Charles Max Cole was not only a neighbor but also my doctor from about my 10th year on. In a conversation with his wife in 1981 when I was 36, and at a point when I was having serious doubts and questions about my upbringing, I asked her: "Do you think I was really that sick all that much or do you think it was partly her imagination?"

She replied, "Oh, I'm sure a lot of it was in her head".

I mentioned this conversation to Dr. Cole a day or so later when I visited his office for a check-up; and, although he didn't respond, I could tell from his demeanor he was very unhappy about her response to me.

Lesson: Sometimes sickness really is all in their head.