I do hold a few very vivid childhood memories: Some good and some not so good but they’re all mine.

Years ago … shot decades ago. One spring my older sister and I were outside playing. At the time we had a German shepherd so we had a VERY high gate to the backyard. I think the Shepard must’ve been in the basement while we were playing outside.

With a jump rope my sister wanted to lasso me. So on one side of the closed gate she created a loop on the ground. She went on the other side and she told me to tell her when I stepped in it and she’d lasso me. It’d be fun!

She made me fall on my butt! Just flat on my butt! Of course, being a small person that I was at the time I screamed, I cried. Just like an almost kindergartener would do. I cried!

I remember my Mom coming out to see what was wrong.

I cried!

There was probably some talk from my Mom and my sister while I cried!

I remember my Mom picking me up of the ground. We went back up the stairs back into the house and I cried.

My Mom put me down on the couch and I cried!

I think my Dad was called home from work and I cried!

There wasn’t any blood. But there was a little bit of swelling. After some ice was put on it and I screamed bloody murder because that hurt, too.

My Grandmother’s was VERY near the hospital where I was going. I think my parent’s dropped my sister off at my Grandmother’s but I could be way wrong on that.

My parent’s then took me to a hospital to see what was going on. Nothing like sitting on my Mom’s lap in the front seat not knowing what the heck was going to be next.

Being put in a wheelchair … what a contraption … how scary.

Having an x-ray person lift me and put me on the table I cried. Having an x-ray person move my leg for pictures? "This won’t hurt," said probably more than one x-ray person. Then how do you take a picture of my leg? This special picture that only is taken at hospitals is very scary. After my leg was touched again I was told, "Stay still do not move. We’ll get the picture like this."

I’m sure I thought what’s a picture?

I was out of that picture room back to where I came but into a different room with curtains. Big curtains!

The doctor came back with the x-rays that were taken. These were pictures of what we were told was of my leg.

There were a couple of lines in the middle of my leg: it was my knee. I think there were a few extra lines above the knee and a few below it too. It was my left leg.

I still was crying but I’m sure I was scared of what was going to happen next!

The nice doctor-friend wrapped my leg in plaster-of-Paris cast, the heavy old fashioned cast material. I know I was crying maybe even screaming, too. And each time my leg was looked at I hurt really bad! Touching it to wrap the entire leg in the cast: was tiring!

Seasons here: Yes that was summer that fall I to go to kindergarten.

Despite all of this … my Mom carried to up stairs to my bed room. But then she had to carry me down stairs to see my friend: my goldfish his name was Bubbles. He was a porker! I loved him. He lived for quite a long time, surprising my parent’s and me, too. At the time I didn’t know any better. Shoot I still do love him. Maybe he’s the reason for my appreciation of fish, especially goldfish.

And if anyone thought that I cried when I initially went to the hospital it was NOTHING compared to when I returned to get the cast removed! Nothing, nothing I tell ya! Have you ever heard a bloody scream of murder? That was me big time! I think I stayed still though I screamed! I do remember the doctor at the time putting the electric dial little cast remover tool on his hand showing me that it wouldn’t hurt. Of course that didn’t help. I still cried!

It wasn’t until we got home that Mom noticed blood on my leg. Proving the reason why I was crying. The darn thing did hurt me! [Typing about it now gets me irritated!]

I was then encased in a walking half plaster cast. A cast from a little below my knee to above my toes.

I also remember when that cast came off and my leg was free there was thick yucky yellow stuff on the bottom of my foot. That was horrid! I even remember that to this day … it was since my foot was in a cast and couldn’t breathe or shed skin it simply was a build-up of dead skin with nowhere to go. At least that was not painful: just yucky!

If kindergarten wasn’t traumatic enough I soon joined school already a few months in progress.

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Flash forward to 2003. Funny thing about the most recent break was a multitude of things actually.  First no one else was involved.  Then I rode in an ambulance with sirens going!  Whee for me!  After a battle with the E.R. doctor I was admitted into the hospital then had a surgery, too!

And you know, as you may have suspected, I was very apprehensive when this doctor had to rev up the electric thing to remove my cast.  The first time was yucky and no one was in the room except medical people. The final time I had to go through that event there was a little girl in the room, too.  She was looking inquisitively AND apprehensively and wide-eyed just down right scared to HELL of what was going to happen to me because she'd be going through that in moments herself!  So when the motor started sure I looked shocked for her viewing but then without her even knowing it she helped me.  I started to make funny faces for her, to her, whatever as the thing was moved up then down my leg.  I want to think that we almost giggled.  But we knew we shouldn't be.  Thinking about it now through tears was she there for me, or was I there for her?  Hummmm?