1960 My Brain Tumor

I started getting migraines when I was around 10 or 11.  I had recently watched "Dark Victory" with Bette Davis.  It's a wonderful movie.  The scene I particularly remember is where she is jumping her horse, Challenger, and see 3 jumps ahead of her.  She picks the wrong one as the real one and crashes through it.  That's when they found out she had a brain tumor.  Of course, she dies at the end.  

Judy sees 3 jumps and sends Challenger over the wrong one

I was convinced that I also had a brain tumor.  No one knew, because I didn't want to deal with the emotion.  When I would get a migraine bad enough to keep me home from school, I said I had a stomach ache.  One of the few things I remember about living in Toledo, Ohio, was being in my parents bedroom with the curtains closed, suffering through the brain tumor and pretending I had a stomach ache.  

A few years later, when we were living in New Jersey, I had a really bad one, maybe the worst I had had up to then.  I told my mother I was sick and wasn't going to school.  She got mad at me and told me I was indeed going to school.  I yelled at her "You'll be sorry when I'm dead from the brain tumor!"  That stopped her in her tracks.  The next day I was at the doctor's office, where I was diagnosed with classic migraines.  My Aunt Audrey also had them.  

From then on, although the migraines probably weren't quite as serious as a brain tumor would have been, they were taken seriously and I would stay home from school.  The doctor also gave me little blue pills (I think they were morphine) to leave with the school nurse.   He warned me that I needed to go home immediately if I took one, because they would completely knock me out.  That scared me so much, I never requested one.

Similar to my auras

Since then, the migraines have waxed and waned.  I often get the sense of impending doom, followed by ripples at the edge of my vision.  At that point, if I immediately make very strong (3-4 teabags) tea with as much lemon juice as needed to bleach the tea, and as much sugar as I can stand, I can usually prevent the actual headache.  Then I just have to suffer through the nausea and the auras.  They start on one side, spread to both eyes, then exit the other side.

1960 Pal

We lived in Toledo, Ohio from 1960 until we left for Venezuela at the end of the school year in 1961.  Every week I went to a riding school in Michigan.  There was a really beautiful Palomino named (surprise) Pal, but you had to earn the right to ride him.  Finally, Mr. White, our instructor (who was black), told me it was my day!  I was excited.  We did our routine exercises, then it was time for jumping.  

Pal and I flew over the first couple of jumps, then we approached the next jump.  Then he stopped.  He didn't tell me he was planning to.  I slid up his neck, over his head, and over the jump, landing on my knees on the other side.  Then he decided to follow me over.  Seeing a large airborne horse looming over me, I rolled over.  When I looked up, his nostrils were in my eyes.  "What are you doing down there?"  he asked.  My back hurt so badly I couldn't move.  My mother started to run out to the arena, but they stopped her.  Mr. White came over to me and helped me up.  He asked me if I could get back on.  I said yes.  So he helped me up into the saddle.  

I took one turn around the arena and had to get off, I was in so much pain.  It wasn't Pal's fault, either.  It was mine.  I should have been gripping tighter with my knees.   My mother took me to the doctor and we found out I had torn all the muscles in my lower back.  I was off school for a week and spent most of that week in a hot bathtub.  They told me if I got pregnant I might have to wear a back brace, since the muscles were weakened. Luckily, that wasn't the case.  I never got the chance to ride Pal again, because not long after that we moved.  

1960 Toledo

I remember almost nothing about Toledo.  I was at camp at Teela Wooket in Vermont during the summer when my family moved.  When they came to get me, we flew from Boston to Toledo.

I remember our house a little, it was shaped like a 3-sided square, with the front door into the living room on the long side, and the kitchen and garage on the right, and the bedrooms on the left.  

My sister and I shared a room, which I hated.  We were 13 and 8 I believe.   We watched Lawrence Welk every Saturday night, which I thought was just awful.  I walked to school.  My mother went on a diet that consisted of steak and salad, nothing else.  She lost quite a bit of weight.  One day an encyclopedia salesman came to the door and stayed for what seemed like hours.  I wanted one of the encyclopedias but didn‘t get it.  In Maine, we had the Book of Knowledge, which I loved.  I also remember carpet cleaning demonstrators coming all the time.  I don’t recall any friends.  

We lived close enough to Lake Erie that we went there in the winter to watch people drive on the ice.

The only memories of note are going to Michigan every Saturday for my riding lessons.  I learned to ride in France, which is a bit different style.  When I told my instructor, Mr. White, that I could jump, he didn’t believe me, and I had to show him.  Fortunately I did well in my demo and he let me join his jumping class.