MacDonald, Betty. The Plague and I. New York: Lippincott 1948. Print.
Getting Tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can't even remember where you were going. The important things now are the pain in your leg; the soreness in your back; what you will have for dinner; who is in the next bed.
Description:
It is a deeply personal, introspective, self-deprecating immersion into the journey through the world of serious illness that begins with her getting fed up with a recurring cough and feeling weak, several doctors' diagnosis (or lack thereof), then takes us through daily life a tuberculous sanitarium from a patient who just happens to be a gifted, humorous writer.
MacDonald is the author of The Egg and I which wittily documents her life with her husband on a chicken farm with no electricity and no running water. She is clearly a survival-type person who can still keep her sense of humor while experiencing outrageous conditions.
Our family motto was "People are healthy and anybody who isn't is a big stinker.
MacDonald's parents and siblings were all extremely healthy. Her father made the children run around the block and do calisthenics to music before breakfast every day (and chew each bite of food 100 times), and a weekly ice bath, even on freezing days when they lived in Montana.
But in the 1930s, divorced and the mother of small children, MacDonald contracts tuberculous, an extremely communicable disease which at that time was usually considered a death sentence. Treatments focused on absolute bed rest in a quiet place, to let lungs recover without exertion. That meant laying around in bed all day, usually in one position, with no reading, talking, reaching, sitting up, or walking without a nurse's permission and help.
So MacDonald begins her stay at The Pines sanatorium in upstate Washington and soon learns the rigorous routine and very strict rules enforced by the doctors and nurses (one fierce Charge Nurse she refers to as "Granite Eyes"). Any deviation from this behavior is considered being uncooperative and are grounds to be sent home (it was a sanatorium that accepted MacDonald and a few other patients free of charge).
The staff at The Pines had but one motivating factor -- to get the patients well. This motivating factor, like a policeman's nightstick, was twirled over our heads twenty-four hours a day....'We are going to make you well and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,' we were told. 'Here is the line, either follow it or get out.'
That meant absolutely no deviation from the schedule and conditions that produced quiet. Day by day, truly hour by hour, MacDonald passes the time waiting for the next meal, whispering secretly to her roommates, having infrequent tests done (without her ever learning the results or any progress, good or bad), and trying to sleep during the twice daily 2-hour rest periods. Visitors were allowed for only a few minutes once a week, no more than three people at a time, and no children permitted.
The night went on and on and on and I grew progressively colder and sadder. 'The one thing to be said in favor of life at The Pines,' I thought, as I tried futilely to warm a small new area at the bottom of the bed, 'it's going to make dying seem a like a lot of fun.'
I'm not making this memoir sound funny, I know, but believe me that MacDonald, although faced with many unfriendly people, restrictions, boredom and medical tests, retained her wry sense of the world and people around her. She records that her roommates offered her some wise words: "The first hundred years here are the hardest."
Being sent to an institution, be it penal, mental, or tuberculous, is no game of Parchesi, and not knowing when, or if, you'll get out doesn't make it any easier. At least a criminal knows what his sentence is.
Not knowing how long she would be in the sanitarium, not ever being told whether her health was improving or getting worse, and living under the constant threat that to not follow the rules meant being sent home and her bed given to someone more willing to try to get well were challenges she faced daily. But overall, her memoir of the experience is a fascinating, entertaining, sobering, and wonderfully witty experience.
From my stay at The Pines I learned that a stiff test for friendship is: "Would she be pleasant to have t.b. with?"
Happy reading.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Diamond, John. Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.
Times of London writer and admitted hypochondriac Diamond details with humor and fear his bout with throat cancer via his newspaper columns. (previously reviewed here)
