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BRISBANE BLUE BABY 1955
I
was born in Brisbane on the 8th
February, 1955. February in Brisbane is
sultry and hot. My mother was approaching
her fortieth birthday. There is much I could
say about my life but this is an essay
telling of my experiences of being born a
“blue baby” , who was not expected to live
and who survived anyway. In 2008 I turned
53 and I intend to keep going as long as I
can as there is much I want to do.
The
term “blue baby” was used to describe a
congenital cardiac condition known as
Tetralogy of Fallot. The baby is born with
this condition. There is no evidence yet to
show conclusively what causes congenital
heart defects. It could be genetically
linked, environmentally related, and
medical researchers are still researching.
I
could describe the condition in detail but I
wont, I’m not a medical practitioner.
Basically the heart is malformed and acts as
an inefficient pump, which means that oxygen
being pumped through the body is not done
efficiently. Children can become cyanotic.
Babies are often born with clubbed fingers,
with the fingertips being blue, and the lips
being blue. They are not a healthy pink
colour, or in the case of darker children,
they are not a healthy colour at all either.
My
mother always claimed that it was due to the
chemicals she was regularly breathing. At
the time of my conception my parents lived
in a rural area. My mother told me they
lived almost next door to the crop dusting
plant and the fumes from the plant would
make her nauseous and ill. It must be
mentioned that my mother was not a smoker or
a drinker, not even a social drinker to my
knowledge.
Later in my life, I wanted to check out this
theory of chemicals from the crop dusting
plant possibly being the cause of my genetic
heart problem. I rang up the Department of
Primary Industries to check what rules and
regulations were in place for farmers
spraying their crops during the 1950s.
Basically they were minimal. Farmers
sprayed at their discretion, chemicals such
as DDT and other chemicals.
During a recent visit to the area I did
notice people who had been born with other
deformities and defects such as shortened
legs and slight mentally handicapped. My
mother also claimed that there was only one
account of anyone in her family having been
born with a weak heart and that had been a
cousin of hers who had died young. One could
speculate forever. My belief is the cause
was an environmental one and not a genetic
one. The prevalence of congenital heart
disease in my mother’s and father’s family
was almost unheard of.
My
parents moved from the country to Brisbane
to live just before I was born. We lived in
an outer working class suburb of Brisbane
called |Zillmere. It was like the country
anyway with bushland and poultry farms all
around. There was no public transport and
the nearest railway station was nearly a
mile from home. This made it hard,
especially in the hot weather when mum and I
had to trudge down to the train to attend
appointments with doctors in the city
regarding my heart condition.
For
the first six months of my life, my mother
felt I may be mentally retarded as I just
lay back listlessly in my cot hardly moving.
At six months it was confirmed that I had a
congenital heart defect.
In
those days there were no 3D imaging
technologies or MRI imaging. There was only
the X-ray and the stethoscope and very
little else to determine the extent of the
damage. I remember on various check-ups to
the hospital being asked to run up and down
steps, a sort of stress test I suppose.
I
would get quite excited by my regular visits
to see the doctor for my check up. It was a
trip on the train and the only outing I
sometimes got as we had no car. We had to
wait for hours to see the doctor. Then he
would listen to my chest with a serious look
on his face and ask my mother questions. On
the way home my mother would buy corn beef
sandwiches and an orange juice for me at the
station and perhaps even a comic book if I
was lucky. Then it would be the quarter mile
walk home in the hot sun when we got back to
Zillmere. Of course, being young I quite
liked missing school, which brings me to the
next topic of my childhood.
. I
missed a lot of school. Back in those days
the advice given to parents was to keep the
child away from crowds to avoid infections.
I was not allowed to play sport at school
either. No wonder my mother always looked
anxious and it was hard not for her to be
over protective sometimes.
It
may have seemed to some that mum was being
overprotective yet normal child hood
illnesses could be life threatening to me. I
can remember many bouts of tonsillitis and a
couple of bouts of pneumonia where I was
hospitalised. I learned years later that I
nearly died on more than one occasion during
my childhood years. I’m so glad no-one told
me until years after my heart surgery at 13
years old that I nearly died in theatre.
So
the fact that I managed to pass school exams
and came out average to above average
depending on what subject it was indicated
that there was nothing wrong with my brain
much. I was a whiz at English because I
spent a large chunk of my childhood reading
books. One of my favourite books when I
first learned to read was called “The
Little Engine that Could”. I have since
read of another Congenital Heart Disease
lady and that was her favourite book as a
child as well. It is about a little train
that chugs up the hill. He is only a little
train but determined to do his job he chants
“I know I can, I know I can”…Something in
this book resonated with me. I loved
history. I was hopeless at Mathematics.
Anyway, there is a lot more to me than just
the illness I was born with. I had my share
of many hardships throughout my life but I
always wanted to help people. I became
involved in church work, got married,
adopted two children, got divorced, but
raised my little family. Because I had known
what it was like to have a disability as a
child, this stood me in good stead for
raising my eldest child who also had a
disability and I was able to be patient most
of the time.
I
trained to be a welfare worker and became
involved in helping people with mental
illness and substance dependencies and I
have been in that type of work most of my
working life. I loved helping the mentally
ill and though my experiences with illness
were not the same I was always able to
empathise greatly with the difficulties of
their illnesses, for like heart disease,
mental illness is not visible on the outside
and so can be misunderstood.
My
children are both adults now and my daughter
has just had her first baby, a boy and a
beautiful grandchild for me He is such good
therapy for me. .I’m sure that child will
keep me going for quite a bit longer yet.
Most
of all I want to dedicate my little story of
being a blue baby, to the doctors and
surgeons who saved my life, especially Dr.
Mark O’Brien who is responsible for
pioneering heart surgery for children back
in the 1960s in Brisbane. I thank God every
day for that man’s genius and feel
privileged to have been in such capable
hands.
Stephen Hawking the great scientist with
motor neurone disease, dreamt that he was
facing his execution and that at the moment
of his execution someone came and he was
given a reprieve. He was saved from his
execution. He realised that he had been
spared so that he could devote the rest of
his life to serving humanity.
I’m
no great scientist, just an ordinary welfare
worker, mother and grandmother, but I too
feel as if long ago, when I was operated on
in 1968 at the Prince Charles Hospital, I
too was given a reprieve. I have made many
mistakes in my life, but I have always had
the sense that I have been given a second
chance. I shall go on trying to help others
in whatever way I can.
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