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Mary Lou, what stories have you been told about yourself as a baby?

I’ve been told that I wasn’t as easy a baby as my older sister.  All my parents had to do to get my sister to stop doing something was to tell her not to do it once.  Telling me no didn’t work.  I’d do it anyway or find another way to do it, I wouldn’t forget about it. I was an active and busy baby.  Mom said that I always had a very strong will.  I was  pretty fussy my first year.  My stomach was always upset.  My parents gave me lots of enemas.  One day when I was 11 months old I let out a blood curdling scream and then went lagaric.  Mom took me to the doctor.  I didn’t have a fever and was just lagaric so the doctor didn’t think anything was wrong with me.  I was usually very active so Mom knew something wasn’t right. I couldn’t keep any food down. This went on for 5 days. Mom said that the only thing that I’d react to was food.  She said she felt cruel but it got to be the only way she could tell if I was still alive was to bang a spoon on a bowl, I’d then make some movement because I wanted to eat.  Mom told of holding me one time and she thought I had died in her arms.  On the 5th day my parents put me in the hospital overnight they were so worried and didn’t know what else to do.  There was a visiting doctor in the hospital that night.  I think he noticed something green in my diaper that gave him a clue.  He phoned my parents in the middle of the night and told them I was very sick and needed to go to the children’s hospital in Portland.  He told them that my small intestine had slipped inside my large intestine.  Portland was over 3 hours away and this was on one of the stormiest and snowiest nights the Oregon coast had seen.  Dad put the tire chains on and Mom, Dad, Mardean and I headed for Portland.  The tire chains broke going up Cape Foulweather.  This was in 1950 and hwy 101 going up over Cape Foulweather was a narrow 2 lane road with many steep drop offs to the ocean below.  Somehow they made it.  As they got close to Portland a police car pulled Dad over for speeding.  Dad explained the situation and the policeman told Dad to follow him with his lights flashing.  The hospital sits at the top of a high hill in Portland, another challenge with snow and no chains.  Somehow Dad was able to get the car up the hill.  They delivered me to the hospital and were waiting in the lobby when pretty soon a doctor came rushing in.  It was my doctor, I guess they hadn’t expected us to arrive so soon.  After the surgery the doctor told my parents that I was a very sick little girl.  No one before had survived longer than 3 days that had this happen to them and we were already on day 5.  He said if I made it the next 48 hours my chances were good of making it.  I had gone into shock immediately when it first happened and that’s why no one thought anything was wrong with me.  Mom said I was always a very active baby so when I wasn’t she knew something was very wrong with me.  She told me to always listen to your inner voice because she had and it saved my life.  My first memory is of seeing Mom and Dad behind a glass wall at the hospital wanting to be with them but I couldn’t.   My mom said that I always had a strong sense for survival and a very strong will.