Throwback Thursday – Autobiography Part 2

Last week I began typing up the autobiography I wrote for my 11th grade developmental psychology class. If you’d like to start at the beginning, check that post out first. This is part 2 of 3.

Childhood

In first grade I had an awesome teacher named Mrs. Bush. She was the best teacher I’ve ever had. As soon as we could read and write, she had us writing our own stories and reading things not only to learn, but to have fun. She taught us words like amphibian, camouflage, reptile, and azure. she began each day with a letter on the board for us to copy into our notebooks and fill out the blanks. We liked her so much, and she liked us so much, that she decided to teach all of us again in second grade. In second grade she taught us sign language, we built a mouse house, learned about the Amish, barn owls and England. We even put on a puppet show for our parents on Open House night. I think those two years were the best of all my years in school. That year the school district redrew the district lines and as it turned out, my house was closer to another elementary school, so the next year I had to transfer to Longstreth Elementary. Third grade was a big adjustment. I had a hard time making new friends, but I survived.

In November 1988, my brother John was born. I had my first kiss around that time too. It was at a bible class which was being hosted at another family’s house. My friend Tim and I were playing together in his room while everyone else was downstairs. I was just innocently playing and talking to him when he grabbed me and kissed me right on the lips. I was so happy! I remember we used to hold hands together and I truly believed we’d be together forever (at the time I was only about 9 years old.)

The summer of 1989, Dad built us a big playhouse in the backyard. It had two ‘houses’, one for me and one for Kris. My house was on top and it had a wobbly bridge across to another platform with a sliding board. Kris’s house was under the slide platform and under my house was another open platform to climb on. That summer we played constantly, pretending to be Swiss Family Robinson in the playhouse, mermaids in the swimming pool and Indians in the woods.

In August of 1989, I had surgery on my ear to remove a benign tumor. It was only supposed to be an outpatient procedure but when I woke up, I was told that the doctor had found a bigger tumor than expected. It had intertwined itself around everything in my ear and the doctor decided to remove everything in my ear. Since then I have been deaf in that ear. At the time, I wasn’t too upset, probably because I was still groggy from the anesthesia. My parents were really upset though. I was supposed to have been well enough to go back to school with everyone else, but when the doctor took off my bandages he discovered that the incision behind my ear had become infected and hadn’t healed. I remember my mom almost fainted and I started crying because blood was running down my neck and the doctor was saying “This isn’t supposed to be happening!” So, in order for it to heal, the wound had to be kept open and an antibacterial ointment used on it every day. Dad was the only one who could change my bandage because mom couldn’t bear looking into it. I hated to have the ointment put on because it was very uncomfortable. About a week or so later, I was back in the operating room to have my ear sewed up again. I was glad when that finally healed. I ended up missing the first week of school because I was still recovering.

I was well enough to go to Disney world in October. I remember that trip well. it was really exciting for all of us because we’d saved the money for a long time to go on that trip. Fourth grade was a lot better than third grade. I had a lot more friends, but I hated most of my classes except art, which was my favorite.

In the summer of 1990, I had to I had to go in the hospital for an intravenous treatment because the tumor was growing in my ear again. We had switched doctors since the ear operation, and my new doctor believed that the IV treatment would be much more successful than another operation. I was glad of that, but 10 days in the hospital, however exciting it may seem gets really boring after the first day. I watched a lot of T.V. and I was homesick and dying to get out of there. I remember talking to Mom on the phone and begging her to come and take me home. She came to visit every day, but I wanted her to stay with me the whole time. I did have a lot of visitors though. Gram came a couple of times and brought magazines and food for me. The rest of that summer was fun though. Chrissy and I played in the woods, building forts and pretending to be Indians and fair maidens and everything else we could possibly imagine.

Fifth grade was a great year. I had great teachers and good friends. We went on a class trip to the Poconos for three days and two nights, we had a Greek Festival and we wrote a book together as a class. In February 1991, I missed about a week of school for surgery on my mouth. I had to have a bone graft to close up the gaps in my gums on either side of my two front teeth. I was so scared of that operation. I was convinced that I was going to die. I think it was because they were going to use bone from my hip to do the graft. I thought I would have a permanent limp, because I didn’t understand that the bone would be taken from the outer part of my hip. As I lay on the operating table slowly breathing in the anesthesia I kept repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over in my head and as I slowly began losing consciousness I begged God to be with me and keep me alive. I was so afraid. It’s a horrible feeling, as you lose consciousness to know that you are no longer in control the doctors and nurses had total control over me and that freaks me out.

Fifth grade was my last year in the Elementary school. My friend Marie moved to Alabama right after school let out and Chrissy had moved in April, so I really didn’t have many friends close by to spend my summer with, but I enjoyed it anyway. I read a lot, rode my bike everywhere and swam in the pool. I got together with Joanna a couple of times and went to the beach with Gram.

—To be continued—

Editor’s note: When I wrote this, I had a very childlike understanding of what had happened in my ear. I refer to it all as a tumor, but it was more than that. I wrote about this in more detail in my post about my early experience with cholesteatoma.