I wore the swimsuit cast until school ended that year. True liberty came in July, just in time to save me from the hell of itching like I did the previous summer when a bent clothes hangar was my best friend. I/

The day finally came when I was to get my walking cast, an abbreviated version of the body cast I lived in for one year. Another trip to the Bell Traction Table, I was a pro after 5 cast changes, and I would be able to wear the sporty

(My cast was slightly different in that there was only a small hole for my stomach and the back was plastered over after the surgery)

Going home in the cast was fun, my first ambulance ride. The driver even offered to turn on the siren when we got/

Because it was not a church service, Grandma Signe felt it would not be a rule breaker to take my mother and me to her church’s Mothers’ and Daughters’ Banquet.  I never asked Grandma Olive about whether or not it was alright because I did not want to be tol/

I was closer to my Grandma Signe than I was to anyone in my life, including my parents. I spent a lot of time at her house since it was a quiet place and I would not be tempted to exert myself. She was always happy and

Each passage on my life’s path has come as a response to the need to mend the cracks and tears of either my physical or spiritual heart. While my physical heart healed with the help of magical machines and teams of doctors, I was fighting a spiritual battle/

I was 9 years old and excited the day that I entered the hospital, only knowing that I was to have an operation that would fix my heart. I was moved to a room with five beds, all filled with little girls around my age./

I wrote a poem about the spells that dominated my childhood and how I was treated when I told the doctors about them:

                          &n

I was a blue baby, never warm and rosy like babies are supposed to be. Like being in cold water too long, my fingers and toes were blue and my body was tinged with a bluish hue. This was the first story I heard about myself from my