You Put Your Right Leg In...

A Memory...

Aunt Nutty, also known as Pinnochio

There are many things I remember about my family growing up. Good and bad, fun and sad, just like everyone else. With two younger sisters and a baby brother, there was never a lack of action but the majority of the truly heinous and wonderful memories involve my extended family. And my extended family are extensive, with some being bestowed titles depending on their quirks or dominant personality traits. For example, is it wrong that to this very day I casually refer to one of my aunts in conversation as "Aunt Nutty" and all of my friends know exactly who I'm talking about? Or maybe that is disturbing? Food for thought... I mean, the woman told us that she had terminal cancer at one point, only to be caught in a lie a few months into her non-existent chemo treatment... hmmm...

One thing I must express here, in writing for all of you, is that these posts regarding my family are all completely true and only occasionally embroidered/exaggerated for entertainment value. This particular snippet however, is 100% fact.

So, a memory of Aunt Nutty, who's real name I won't divulge because one must always work to protect children and the mentally deranged, in my opinion anyway.

An occasion for celebration. I think it was Christmas Day. Always chaotic, and always a chance for me and my cousin TJ to find mirth in everything. I enter the kitchen, where Aunt Nutty is hurrying from oven to sink to bench. She is alone, and walking freely in the haste one normally possesses when attempting to cater for 20+ people. After five seconds of bustle she notices my entrance and immediately slopes into a well-defined limp in her right leg. Neither of us acknowledged the fact that I've just witnessed her moving around without hinder, and so I hurry to assist her with the food. Finally, I can't help myself.

"Why are you limping, Aunt Nutty? Did you hurt yourself?" She looks at me in wide eyed amazement.

"Didn't you hear? I had a massive stroke!" I exclaim with the level of concern appropriate for when you know someone is lying, but you don't have the energy to call them on it.

"A stroke? Oh my god! When? How did I not know about this! You must have been in hospital for a while?"

"It happened a while ago, big blood clot on the right side of my brain," she tapped her head and nodded. "I thought your father would have told you."

Truth be told my parents were probably also unaware of her latest brush with death - they'd also been unaware of her fake-terminal cancer (I'd been sworn to secrecy as my mother was pregnant at the time and apparently wouldn't have been able to handle the stress of it all). So while I should have bitten my tongue and left the kitchen, I was in my late teens, extremely opinionated and prone to ranting... 

"Aunt Nutty, it's strange you're limping on your right leg." She looks at me while stirring some  sauce into a seafood dish that will later give several members of the family food poisoning.

"Why?"

"My best friend is a nurse, and she works with stroke victims. She said just the other day that if the stroke is on the right side, it is mostly the left side of the body that gets affected, so shouldn't your limp be on the left side?"

Now I have no proof that this is true, I think I'd heard it on TV, but the effect was very amusing.

"Oh well, my stroke was a bit different you know, very rare! I was lucky they were able to stop it at all. Also, I'm ambidextrous, so both sides of my brain work the same way, that probably had something to do with it." 

Ambidextrous indeed.

"Wow, it's pretty complicated brain surgery from what I've heard," I replied, "because they have to get the clot out as quickly as possible. They've managed to keep your hair intact though. Do you still have the stitches?" She paused, grasping for an explanation.

"Oh, umm, yes, well it can require surgery, but in my case I was able to get it fixed with medication. Like I said, very rare."

I respond with exclamations of brilliance aimed at her amazing doctor. Fancy being able to get rid of her big deadly blood clot remotely (and no doubt, miraculously)! I finally tire of the conversation, grab a drink from the Eski and head outside.

Three hours later, in the car on the way home, my little brother, GolfBoy, looks at my dad in all his eight-year-old innocence and asks,

"What was wrong with Aunt Nutty's left leg?"

Impressed with his attempt to know right from left, I seek to immediately correct him  -  he clearly had it confused with her right leg, only I was interrupted by my 16yo sister, PartyGirl.

"Oh yeah, that's what we were laughing at this afternoon!" I remembered wondering what all my cousins were giggling about as they lounged on the trampoline. She continues, "Yeah, she wasn't limping when we got there, and then she started limping on her right leg, but a few hours later she swapped to her left. What an idiot!"

"Yeah Dad," I pipe in, "She told me she had a massive stroke with a big blood clot on the right side of her brain, that was somehow resolved without the need for brain surgery. I told her that her limp was on the wrong side, so she swapped legs." My siblings cracked up laughing as my parents exchanged a knowing look.

And people wonder why I call her Aunt Nutty?

* A Note.

Although it seems I am making light of this situation, I certainly do not take the issue of stroke lightly and while I laughed it off at the time, the fact someone would make up a story like that horrified me. The amount of harm my Aunt Nutty has caused over the years with her lies and behaviour has caused an irreparable rift in our relationship. I simply cannot accept why the family indulge her in her lies. If it is a mental health issue, as my father claims, then why has it never been treated? Unfortunately, Aunt Nutty's dependency on unnecessary prescription medications has had a horrific impact on her health. It's a shame that such a beautiful, vibrant woman has had her life so horribly impacted, ironically by a strange desire to be sick all the time - to the point she'd communicate that she was terminally ill. While I forgave her for it a long time ago, I'll never forget the despair I felt when I heard my beloved Aunt was dying... and that it had to be kept a secret from my parents... only to be told later it was all a horrifying lie. If I had my time again I'd encourage my family to get her the help she needed - before it was too late.

Snap and Crack

A memory...

I hate broken bones. No, I loath broken bones. It could almost be said I have a phobia. Any television footage where there is a sportsman getting his leg broken, or ankle snapped brings on dry retching and a sick feeling in my stomach. I've seen friends break limbs on the sporting field and I've had to walk away and let everyone else assist, lest I faint in the face of the injury. My saving grace is that until recently the most extreme break I'd experienced was a hairline fracture in my right ring finger - then I decided to fracture an ankle while quad bike riding in the jungle in Thailand... *sigh* 

So now I've explained that, I'll tell you about my brother who I shall call GolfBoy (yes, he is obsessed with golf, obviously).

Not GolfBoy.
He was much cuter

GolfBoy is twelve years younger than me, and when I was nearly 15, he was in the far end of his "terrible twos." I loved him so much, he was like my little doll, and to this day my feelings for him are extremely maternal. He was beautiful, sorry, he still is, but back then he stopped old ladies in their step as mum passed with him in the street. We were so proud of our little GolfBoy. Beautiful blond ringlets, true ringlets, old hollywood style, I loved to brush them (and yes, put them in little piggy tails complete with bows much to my father's horror). He had big sky blue eyes with lashes girls dream of, peaches and cream complexion and a cherubic pink mouth, and mischievous - you had to watch him like a hawk lest he disappear or cause havoc. I begged mum to let me enter him into a baby show, and was vindicated when he won a truckload of prizes.

I never thought I'd encounter a situation where I could overcome my repulsion of broken bones. In fact at the time, I knew I couldn't.

One day I was in the kitchen making a sandwich, Dad was in his Study, talking on the phone in a haze of cigarette smoke, my sister, (who I shall call BomberGirl because she is obsessed with the Essendon Bombers) was watching TV, and GolfBoy was, I believed, playing on the lounge room floor. The front door was open to let the cool summer breeze in the warm house, and nobody had noticed the baby gate was open. In fact, nobody noticed that it was GolfBoy who had opened it and escaped outside to roam our 1 acre property unfettered by fussy carers.

I was slicing up my sandwich when I heard crying. Now GolfBoy had several different cries that mum, dad and I were all very familiar with. My sisters knew them too, but were not as attuned as we were. Some were not in use as much as they used to be due to his ability to communicate now he was getting older. There was the tired cry, the hungry cry, the generally grumpy cry, the "I want" cry, the "temper tantrum" (which we all dutifully ignored until he cried himself out), and then there was the "variations of pain" cry. The pain cry had several different octaves. There was the "that scared me more than it hurt me" cry, the "ooooh that hurt" cry, then there was the "oh my god that HURTS please help me" cry. We'd only heard that on a few occasions, usually involving fingers stuck where they shouldn't be.

This cry was the worst one.

I dropped my knife, turned and hurried down the hall past the study to the entryway, where GolfBoy was toddling through the front door, looking up at me, reaching out. His face, from the eyes down, was caked in bright red blood, pulsing horribly from a slash between his eyes. Through that slash I could see the bright white of exposed bone.

I turned, bile rising in my throat, and did the most horrible thing I'd ever done to my baby brother: I ran away. 

I got three steps when I realised what I was doing. He was there, reaching out for me, and I had walked away. Without pausing I overcame my phobia, ran back to him and scooped him into my arms. He hugged me, sobbing and getting blood all over my top and neck.

'Dad, I think we need to go to the hospital," I said. I hurried to the entrance of the study, turned GolfBoy so Dad could see the blood, and hurried onto the kitchen to get a damp tea towel to stem the flow and clean his face and eyes. By the time I'd done this Dad had ended his phone call, grabbed his car keys and was heading out to the car. BomberGirl, who'd only just keyed onto the fact something was wrong, followed us blithely.

These were the days before mobile phones, and mum was down at the shops, so we left BomberGirl behind to tell Mum where we were. Dad drove and I carried GolfBoy on my lap. By halfway to the hospital I had most of the blood cleaned up, and could see bruises blooming around his eyes. We passed Mum on the way, waived her down, and she came up to the car to see what was wrong. Nothing can get between a mother and an injured child. She snatched GolfBoy from my arms, ran to her car and took off, driving with him in her lap! I never said my mother was intelligent.

I won't bore you with the minute details of the next few hours, but it involved a lot of impatience and blame-storming from my mother as she tried to determine who should take personal responsibility for this tragedy. In the end it was just a very minor cut, with a few tiny butterfly-stitches that didn't even leave him with a scar.

When we finally got home, we set GolfBoy on his feet and asked how he got the injury. GolfBoy tottered forward, simulated a trip and while I'm sure he didn't mean to fall face first into the edge of the stone step, he did. Again. Breaking open the freshly stitched wound.

This time we mopped him up ourselves.

In the meantime, as soon as the saga was over my phobia returned. So it seems short bursts are all I can handle