In a Good Spot

It’s phenomenal to look at the childhood pictures from just before the disease came, and just after. My arms and my legs became really pencil thin, while my knees became so swollen that they almost look like two oranges. I looked like the kids from Ethiopia shown on the fund-raising TV commercials, the ones suffering from malnutrition. I didn’t have the big abdomen those poor kids have, but my legs and arms looked much the same.

I remember the first day very well. Dad was off somewhere doing his extracurricular work and mom was folding freshly laundered clothes on the edge of our family room couch. Judy, five years older than me, wanted to go on a bicycle ride with friends. I begged to be allowed to tag along with the big girls. With some reservations about the choice, mother nonetheless allowed me to go along. She implored Judy to take care of me, but my big sister insisted that they would be riding for long distances and going very fast. “I can keep up,” I insisted. And I got my way.

After what seemed to be an eternity of bike riding, I found myself feeling very tired. Then, on the way home, I fell off of my bicycle twice – once at the railroad tracks, and once on the street. Nothing major, I just skinned my knee. But by the time I made it home, I was so exhausted that mother ordered me to get in bed for a nap. She felt my forehead, and thought I may have been running a temperature, so she immediately gave me children’s aspirin tablets, put a cool towel on my forehead, and put me down for a much-needed rest.

I awoke from my slumber, suddenly realizing that I could not move any part of my body, and that I felt as though I was on fire! I yelled for my mother. As she ran into the bedroom, finding me hysterically distraught, she looked my body over. I was feverishly hot to the touch, but there were no apparent signs of rash or discoloration. She took my temperature. “It was so high that I became frightened,” she now recalls.