Aunt Bertha . . . Continued

However . . .
JH does remember being ill herself: Mummy thought I was malingering – as I became reluctant to go to school. The first episode of vomiting occurred when we were all on holiday down on the south coast and staying in a guest house. I vomited all over the bedclothes in my cot [although I was 7 years old, I now assume that I was in a cot because a double bed, single bed, and my cot all had to be squeezed in one bedroom.] My mother was mortified as, of course, she had to face the landlady! Feeling unwell, and at times feeling really ill, seemed to go on for ever . . . but it was probably only a matter of weeks before Dr Cadogan came and felt my tummy. I went in to Maidenhead Hospital and had my perforated appendix removed; I woke up in a cot; I remember seeing a bit of rubber protruding from my tummy when my tummy was uncovered. When the a kind nurse asked ‘Jeanette, do you think you could eat a little now’ I remember seeing a small bowl of something brown – perhaps it was stew, but not like anything I had eaten at home: I was actually fed with a few spoonfuls. Thereafter I obviously got better. I was very sad that the girl younger than me in the opposite cot cried so miserably after her parents visited in the half-an-hour allowed: I was grown-up enough to know that my parents would come back. I was also so pleased to see my big sister looking through the windows at the end of the ward, and smiling and waving at me. I was also very sad for the boy in the next bed [although he was younger] to me, who did ‘big things’ in his bed, and got ‘unpleasantly’ reprimanded by an angry nurse. And I was reprimanded by an angry nurse after I tried to snatch off her hat as she walked passed the end of my cot: in fact I definitely remember receiving a slap on some part of my anatomy! This all happened over Christmas. I was at home by the New Year . . .

I remember sitting feeling so miserable by an unlit coal fire – which had of course not been lit until my arrival home. And I remember my sister coming into the living room looking so worried, and my mother told her that I was too tired to talk just then. So I was put to bed.

Then . . .
I developed a lump in my right groin, which Mummy spotted during one bath-time a few weeks later. My mother asked 'What's that?' and although I had noticed the lump, 8-year old JH was not upset to see the lump. But JH could not 'show off' her lump quite like she did - when she grazed her knee, and took off the top of the wart on her knee . . . and blood ran all down her leg. Mummy did not like her youngest daughter running around with a bloody leg in the playground, and so the wart was burnt off in the Outpatients Department which made a sizzling smell, and a nice black spot - which eventually faded but left a scar for ever. JH also had a greenstick fracture of her arm, which she sustained when chasing her Big Sister down a muddy path, in other words, it would have been muddy if wet . . . but the depression of footprints had hardened into ridges: so JH tripped over. JH went . . . again to St Luke's Hospital, had an X-ray of her arm, and was provided with a collar-and-cuff sling.

After the discovery of the lump . . . a trip to the surgery to see nice Dr Cadogan resulted in JH being sent to the Hospital again. I went too and fro to the Outpatients: Mr Windsor used to take us in a car; Mr Windsor was a short Polish man with a strong accent, but I could understand him; his wife was American, and about a foot taller than him; they had changed there name to ‘Windsor’ because Mr Windsor had only survived the War and escaped from his homeland because he was ‘rescued by our King’. One morning Mummy asked if I would go to the Hospital, just with Mr Windsor, and although I felt a bit shy – we went . . . however, both Mr Windsor and I realised I was missing my turn - but fortunately the Nurse realised that Mr Windsor was a bit shy of taking his young charge to the desk. I think Mr Windsor got to know the Hipseys, because Daddy insured Mr Windsor’s car. Mrs Windsor, came with a present each for Ann and I – two little baskets which were painted white and were decorated with flowers, and had handles on top like mini picnic baskets. Being polite little girls – we thanked Mrs Windsor . . . but my mother realised that I could not quite understand what my funny little basket was for . . . even by that age I had started my collection of Minic cars, and had played with Bruce’s Meccano [although I did have at least one doll, and a tiny teddy bear. Many years later Mummy told me that she had put teddy bear on Daddy’s bonfire, as she had found him virtually consumed by mice in the shed at the bottom of the garden, which Ann and I used to call our Little House].

For several days I had poultices applied to the lump – and I was so frightened that they would be really hot [but they were not hot enough]! But it was all to no avail. I heard it being said that ‘we don’t have a bed available for Jeanette to be admitted’ and so I was taken into the consulting room by a kind lady. I heard myself saying ‘can Mummy come as well’ – which made Mummy look so sad. I lay on a couch: I can still visualise the kind lady’s face although it was upside down as she said so nicely ‘just breathe in and out for me’ and my panic went as she gently put something over my nose . . . and then I was sitting up on the couch in a side room . . . and vomited all down my best twinset (knitted by Auntie Bertha) . . . which I wore the following day when I went back to the hospital and so was horribly smelly, and I saw another bit of rubber tubing sticking out of a hole in the very top of my leg. Thereafter, the District Nurse came and gave me injections of penicillin. And my sister practised her nursing skills, learnt at the Red Cross, by replacing my hip-spica bandage . . . perhaps she helped the District Nurse, who came to change my dressing {as in wound dressing, nothing to do with getting dressed) but JH seems to remember another Red Cross Cadet the same age as Ann helping to re-bandage me.