We interrupt our riveting story of how I learned to put on my pants after my stroke to bring you some thoughts about a current topic of interest. (And to give me some time to deal with some major writer’s block. I know, you are wondering how, with a topic as potentially exciting as putting on pants, how could you get writer’s block? Well, Mr. Smarty-Pants, you think of the next word.)
Anyway. All across the country, parents of children with bleeding disorders are arranging meetings with teachers, administrators and school nurses to explain the intricacies of their child’s condition—things and behaviors to watch for, treatments and first aid measures to use, phone numbers to call, and all the other needed information.
Somewhere around 1958, I was going into seventh grade for the first time. (Why I would go into the seventh grade more than one time will be dealt with later.) In our school district, this meant I was leaving elementary school and going into junior high, and my mother had to meet with six teachers instead of one. She started as she always did, with the principal, Mr. D.
Mr. D was a good-hearted, conscientious man, but he had never heard of hemophilia and was pretty sure it was an old wives’ tale. My mother gave her usual presentation about how my blood didn’t clot, how I’d have internal hemorrhages—usually in my joints—that could keep me out of school for three or four weeks, how I couldn’t take part in gym class because a bump or a twist was all that was needed to start a bleed, and how, with their permission, she could pick up my assignments so that I could do them at home or in the hospital, and she could bring my work back for the teachers to grade.
Mr. D thanked her for the information and said he was sure they could take good care of me. However, he didn’t see any way he could take me out of the state-mandated physical education class. The teachers were mostly receptive, although Mom felt she was being humored rather than taken seriously, but they all agreed to give lesson plans and assignments to her if I was in the hospital.
There came a morning in September when I was standing on an entrance step waiting for the first bell to ring and let us into our first day of junior high. I had a notebook, a pouch with some pens and pencils, and a letter with my locker number and class schedule. I had talked to some buddies I hadn’t seen over the summer, and was watching the kids, and waiting for the bell. There was a kid running around randomly punching kids. I turned to see what was making some girls squeal, and when I turned back to see what the running kid was up to, I found out that what he was up to was punching me in the stomach.
I don’t remember the classes or even who my teachers were, but the day must have been like most school days. At supper that night, my stomach was kind of sore, and by breakfast the next day, it was obvious I had to go to the hospital. That hospital stay was, I’m guessing, about four weeks. And the day before they said I could leave, something else started bleeding.
Actually, I don’t remember anything about that hospital stay. And I have no idea what started bleeding before I could go back to school. Almost all of my hospitalizations of my youth were like that. I could usually tell you what the last trip to the hospital was for, and sometimes even the one before that, but after that, they pretty much melded into generic hospital stays. I might remember specific incidents or personalities, but would have no clue to why I was in there unless it was a particularly memorable bleed.
In my defense, this was probably due to the sheer number of hospitalizations. My first trip was at age 7, and by the time I was 21, I had been admitted to the hospital more than 150 times. Not much compared with some of the other guys—a couple of the guys just about lived there—but still a respectable 10.7 trips per year on average. But then, reality doesn’t usually average out. Some years, like the second year I was in the seventh grade, I was only in the hospital two or three times, and other years, I might be hospitalized 16 or 17 times.
But the year I went into seventh grade for the first time was one of the worst. I would be home a day or two, and something would start bleeding, so back to the hospital I’d go. A few times, the next hemorrhage would start while I was still in the hospital recovering from the initial one. I wished I could have even one night at home in my own bed, but it was out of the question.
Since most of the days I wasn’t in school, I was in the hospital, it meant spending three hours every morning in the hospital’s school. On the days when I couldn’t, for whatever reason, be taken up to the school in the hospital, a teacher would come down to see me that afternoon, and we’d work on that day’s lessons for two or three hours. You had to be in surgery or a coma before they would consider giving you a day off school in the hospital.
Through it all, my mother picked up the next week’s assignments every Friday, and she turned in that week’s work. She and the school secretary would talk for a few minutes, and Mom would give her an update on the current bleed, and the likelihood of my getting back to school in the near future. And there were times when I would get to attend school for two or three days. This built up over time, and by the time the school year ended in June, I had eighteen days of attendance and a solid C average.
That’s when we found out there was a law that said a student had to be in attendance at an accredited school for 40 days during the school year to advance to the next grade. The problem, it turned out, was the hospital school. They were undergoing their last year of review before receiving their accreditation. In fact, if this had happened just one year later, I would have slid right into eighth grade, but this wasn’t the next year, and I had to repeat seventh grade.
This was OK with me. I liked most of my classmates (in six years, we would be the class of ’64), but I didn’t feel any strong connection to the class. Maybe it had something to do with all that time in the hospital. Anyway, the guys in my new class were pretty cool, and being in the class of ’65 sounded better than the class of ’64.
When my mother met with Mr. D that next August, she found we had a different set of problems to deal with. Not only were they going to take me out of gym class, but they wanted to assign me “helpers” in some of my other classes.
- Science classes: They didn’t want me to accidentally slash myself with a scalpel or pin my finger down to the dissecting pad instead of the frog. I would have a helper to handle all the sharp, pointy things and save me from an early death. Also, I might jam a pipette into my arm, or cut myself on a broken beaker or test tube. Again, my helper would be the buffer between me and any potentially lethal equipment.
- Shop class: In our school, everybody, male and female, took a semester of shop in both seventh and eighth grade. The same with home economics. All those saws, chisels, knives and awls were just too dangerous, and perhaps it would be best to take me out of shop class.
- Home Economics: There were even more knives in the cooking lessons, and all those pins and needles in the sewing lessons. Perhaps they should take me out of that, too.
- Band: I was a drummer, and there didn’t seem to be any potential problems with that as long as I could be trusted not to hit myself with the sticks, but they thought it best I didn’t march in parades or football games. This turned out to be a good call, and in senior high school, I became the “Voice of the Tecumseh High School Marching Band” during football halftime shows.
- Math: Those compasses were lethal. Best to have someone else handle them because there was too big a chance I might jam one into my hand or arm.
My mother thanked Mr. D for his concern, but told him that I had to learn how to handle the sharp and pointy things in life. And she explained that I had earned woodcarving and cooking merit badges in Boy Scouts, so I could be trusted not to stab myself or randomly slash one of my arms. Taking me out of gym class and marching would be more than enough. He wasn’t convinced, but she eventually talked him into trying it her way. When school started that September, I was there for my first day of seventh grade again. It was great.