Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site.

The question for this week is:

Were you prone to accidents and injuries when you were growing up? Did you ever break a bone? Knock out any teeth? Get stitches? Have you ever ridden in the back of an ambulance? Did you ever have surgery or spend any time in a hospital? How did your folks treat injuries and illnesses? With lots of TLC or by telling you to get a stiff upper lip? Was there a particular home remedy that your mom (or dad or whoever!) used or any “traditions” involving injuries or illnesses? What’s the worst injury (or illness) you had when you were growing up?

Thankfully I was fairly healthy as a child. I had the usual non-major illnesses and injuries: chicken pox, strep throat, skinned knees, etc., but thankfully no major illnesses or accidents, no broken bones. I had my tonsils removed when I was about six, but that was fairly common then. That was my only childhood hospitalization. I remember my beloved doctor carrying me to the operating room, being asleep but then waking up IN the operating room, but thankfully before they started doing anything, feeling uncomfortable afterward but enjoying staying in bed, reading comic books, and eating jello and ice cream.

I did have a few relatively minor injuries along the way. In first or second grade, a group of us were throwing rocks at each other — not maliciously — it was all in fun. I don’t know why we thought that would be fun. But I got hit in the head and started bleeding profusely. I do remember my mom coming and I remember going to the doctor — I don’t remember an ambulance or stitches. When I got back to school the teacher made us all write 100 times or so, “I will not throw rocks,” and I was indignant that I, as the injured party, had to suffer punishment, too. 🙂

I don’t remember how old I was when my mom asked me to help take the side down on her friend’s playpen, and somehow my finger got stuck and cut into just below the nail. It must have gotten infected, because some time later we had to go to the doctor about it. While he was working on my finger, removing the nail, his nurse was between me and my hand  (which was stretched out on a board) asking me about my birthday. I was so aggravated with her! Who wants to talk about their birthday at a time like that! I realized later she was just trying to distract me from what the doctor was doing. Then another time, my brother dropped his toy gun on my foot — toy guns were made of heavy metal, not the lightweight stuff they use today — and I ended up having to get a toenail removed. Not fun.

Vicks VapoRub on forehead, cheeks, and chest was the remedy for a really bad cold. We lived in houses that had boxy gas stoves in the living room as the main source of heat, and my parents would put a coffee can full of water and a dollop of Vicks in it on the stove as kind of a room humidifier. Iodine was put on cuts, causing a burning sensation and leaving a red stain for a while. Calomine lotion was used for anything itchy, from bug bites to chicken pox, leaving us with pink spots from the medicine. The only really weird home remedy I remember was that if we had an earache, my dad would blow cigar smoke in our ears and then stuff them with cotton. I have no idea why — it sounds so bizarre. Maybe the warmth was supposed to be soothing? As an adult I was concerned that the smoke did long term damage and I was going to get cancer in my ears or head, but figured since I couldn’t do anything about it after the fact, I wouldn’t worry about until I needed to.

We never went for regular dentist checkups — my parents had neither the money for that nor the dental insurance. When I was in junior high, I had two abscessed teeth, on one either side of my head, and the dentist pulled one of them one week and the other one the next week. He said that when my wisdom teeth came in, the other teeth would move down into the empty space — and they did. That was my only dental experience until after I was married — and, of course, there was a LOT of dental work to be done then! I only had to have my bottom two wisdom teeth taken out when I was in my 30s. The oral surgeon keopt saying, “This is so much easier to do when you’re 16,” and I kept thinking, “Maybe, but I can’t help that now!”

Because my parents had several children and not much money, we only went to the doctor if something was really bad or had lasted a long time. Probably because of that, and the fact that sometimes waiting made the situation worse, I was prone to go to the doctor myself and take the kids to the doctor a little too often for several years, but I think I have evened out now.