Dear Friends,

Have you ever experienced a moment in your current life that threw you into your childhood like it was last night? I thought these moments only happened in the movies or novels. But if art imitates life…

My son called home for some advice on a decongestant versus antihistimine for some sinus cold symptoms he is experiencing. We talked through it for about 90 seconds and then we hung up because he had to go do whatever was next.

Hanging up, I was immediately transported back to the puke green 70’s kitchen complete with yellow linoleum floor and velvet patterned wallpaper in my first childhood home where I learned to swallow capsules.

Side note: my son was about 12 before he could swallow pills successfully. I had great sympathy for this milestone and I was so patient with him in this. We did liquid and meltables and ice cream after and everything in between for years until he got it.

Back to to the green kitchen, but first a bit of back story…

I had asthma as a child—the deep bronchial kind that keeps you sick forever, not the acute emergency inhaler kind. I don’t really remember how the diagnosis was finally made, but I was a sick kiddo ALOT. When I was a baby, my parents had to put the inside family dog outside. Before my third birthday, they had to get rid of our woodstove. I was at the doctor’s office so often, I thought I had my own side entrance!

I remember receiving allergy shots twice a week when I was maybe 5? I would run up the metal fire escape staircase outside of the lab at my doctor’s office, knock on the door, and stick out my arm. Annie, the red-headed nurse with a British accent, would swab my arm and jab me and then let me pick out a piece of chewing gum. We Gen X kids did independent things much earlier back then. My mom would be in the parking lot in the car with my sister in the backseat. We were usually on the way to a dance class or piano lesson.

My dad says he remembers the night I laid my head on the table and said, “please don’t make me get shots anymore. I can’t do it one more day.” According to him, I never got another allergy shot.

I was so sick, so often that removing my tonsils was the next step. I remember mamma buying me a pretty housecoat and nightgown set to wear in the hospital. It hung on the back of my door for a month before I was to go. I was not allowed to wear it before the surgery in case I messed it up. Apparently the surgery was a no-go. I still have my tonsils. My father pulled the plug three days before the surgery. I have vague memories of all of this, but really, I only remember the housecoat and nightgown I never wore.

A new pediatrician moved to town to join my then current doctor. I think he must have been the one who said asthma. All I remember was one week I was to have my tonsils out and the next week I was at Duke University hospital for tests. My mother drove me everywhere. God love her. She bought a Porky the Pig and Betty Boop coloring book and a new box of crayons for me for the car rides and waiting rooms.

The hospital was cold and dark and full of unfriendly older people—not like today’s children’s hospital with bright cheery walls and sweet tempered nurses. I have only two memories of my time at the hospital. I remember standing in a dark room alone in front of a big gray box in my white slip and knee socks freezing to death and trying not to cry while getting a chest xray. And I remember the blood work. A whole host of med techs kept trying to prick my fingers to get enough blood for the slides. After pricking all four fingers on my left hand, they said they were going to need the other hand. My mother went ballistic and told them to take it out of my arm like a grown up. Apparently no one told them I had been watching my nurse give me a shot in the arm twice a week for months and I could hold still just fine. Anyway, I got a smiley face bandaid in the elbow crease of my arm for the ride home.

Now to the kitchen part, really this time…

I ended up on several medicines four times a day for a very long time. I couldn’t swallow pills yet since I was barely six. My parents would pull the capsules apart and put the medicine in my apple sauce, or mashed potatoes, or pudding, or whatever they could mix it into. I would dutifully swallow it every time. At school every day, my teacher would break apart that capsule and put it in the apple sauce cup that I carried in my yellow Snoopy lunchbox.

Finally one day, I must have cried again, because the next thing I know I am standing in the kitchen after supper with my dad in front of my chalkboard where I had my math families all written out in colored chalk—one color for each family. My dad pulled out some ice cubes, broke them into pieces, took one of my capsules and proceeded to try to teach me to swallow it. Over and over again, a bite of ice and the capsule at the same time on my tongue until I swallowed.

It took a long time. You’d think my mouth would have been numb from the ice by the time the capsule started melting, but no. I still recall the taste of that melting capsule. I am sure I threw up. After a few nights (weeks?) of this I finally figured it out.

Oh but there’s more…

I never lied. I was not good at it. When I tried to lie, I was always caught out and always punished. So I never lied. My parents trusted me and never watched me take or even asked me about my meds. They just laid the pills out for me on the counter and assumed I was following directions, as all good eldest daughters do.

I did throw a capsule away in the trashcan one time in a moment of defiance and my mother caught me. She yelled at me and I remember being very ashamed. That medicine was super expensive and she had spent countless hours of her life trying to make me well.

But taking this medicine was the worst worst worst thing that had ever happened to me and I just hated it so much. It made me hallucinate. It made my tummy hurt. It tasted so icky. So I lied and I started hiding my pills.

One day my younger sister found a pile of hidden pills. I was hiding them behind the curtain in the bathroom. I didn’t have the courage (or common sense) to flush them. She must have taken them to my parents. Strangely enough, I don’t remember being punished. I feel certain I was, but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe the fact that I would deliberately hide something I knew was supposed to make me well gave my parents enough pause to try to talk with me about what was bothering me. Maybe they were so thankful my sister didn’t take the pills by accident—after all she would have barely been five. I could ask my dad. I’m not sure he even remembers.

The funny thing about the pill discovery is that, as a family, we made it into a huge funny story. We told it ad nauseum at every gathering of family and friends for years. In fact, I won a poetry contest in eighth grade when I wrote a poem called “My Medicine.” I still have the poem written in careful cursive in the poetry book I made in language arts that year.

I’m really not sure why talking to my son about a cold would bring all these memories to the forefront of my mind today. But it did.

I hope you enjoyed my story. We all have seminal childhood encounters. I would love to hear about yours! I also hope you have good memories of all the people in your life who helped you get “weller.” I am fortunate enough to have parents who kept seeking answers, who forgave me for hiding my medicine, and fought for me until I eventually conquered my chronic condition. I am grateful for good medicine, tireless parents, and understanding teachers who accepted my mother’s endless notes: Marla has our permission to take the medicine in her lunch box/purse/backpack. Thank you for letting her stay inside during recess because of her asthma/cold/ear infection/cough.

To this day, I haven’t eaten apple sauce in over 40 years.

Love Y’all,

Marla