Me and my Sister

I have an older sister.  Three years older.

When we were little, as many kids do, we used to play together - a little more on the rough side on the part of my older sibling. 

This is a photo of my sister trying to hold me up to the camera and make me smile:

The photo above looked suspiciously like this cartoon I found on the internet:

Uncanny, huh?????

Strawberry Marks and Babies

When I was an infant, I developed a "strawberry mark" or "superficial hemangioma"soon after birth - a benign tumor - on the side of my face.

It was a little bit bigger than a quarter-sized red mark right next to my eye and only slightly raised.  My mother became quite concerned about it because it was growing in size, and at about 8 months old she became so concerned that she consulted with her MD.

 photo i "borrowed" from a
commercial website

Hemangiomas are the most common-type benign tumor in babies.  Approximately 4% to 10% of caucasian babies have a hemangioma. 

It is 3 to  5 times as prevalent in females - especially those that are fair-skinned.  They are rare in Asian and African American babies.  The incidence in premies is approximately 25% and more common in twins**.

 In the 1950s,  sometimes methods of treatment were less than brilliant and verged on experimental.   With the advent of technology came flagrant misuse without proper testing at times. 

With risks unknown, future results can be devastating - case in point - the DES debacle.   Today, treatment of hemangiomas is reserved for only those marks that are determined high risk for complications.

My MD suggested that I be treated with radiation therapy.   So, appointments were made for my mother to take me for a series of "X-ray treatments".    As a new young mother with 2 other children age 3 and under, she had to take me by bus to the clinic downtown Vancouver.  She says I slept through all the treatments.

Back in the 1950s, Xray machines were nowhere near the refined technology that it is today.  There are still some hospitals (hopefully not many) that use older machines that may emit higher levels of radiation than necessary.  The more recent machines are a vast improvement.  But in the 1950s the levels of exposure were not so discriminatory.

It has now been concluded that irradiation in infants may cause growth retardation (no wonder I am so short compared to the rest of my family!) and possible future radiation-induced cancers.   A cohort***from 1909 to 1959  was defined for later studies  on possible late effects from the type of radiation exposure or "treatment"  I had as an infant.

For example,   here is a study that was done in 1996 on this cohort that correlates the incidents of breast cancer risk to the radiation treatment of the hemangiomas in in the area of a baby's breast tissue.

 By the late 1950s irradiation was discontinued because of the increasing knowlege that a) there were inherent risks to radiation and b) the marks would usually resolve spontaneously in time.  

However, it took time for medicine to catch up to the studies done, because even though it was shown that strawberry hemangiomas usually spontaneously regressed on their own, it didn't stop the extensive use of radiation therapy until the late 1950s - similar to DES use into the 1960s well after being disproved an effective treatment.

I can understand how the concern of parents, distressed by their child's appearance along with their MD perhaps not taking the time to educate the patient or themselves to the current improved methods of treatment, perpetuated the use of this method of treatment long after the true facts were known.

Meanwhile....Bad news is  - I  perhaps may have to consider the possibility that I might be "at risk" for cancer.  Good news is -  I no longer have a strawberry mark. 


**  Here is the story of a mother and her baby with a hemangioma
***A cohort is a group of people who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined period of time

ID Bracelets: and Babies Mix up

This past spring when I was at my folks' house, I made an interesting discovery.

As I have often done through the years, I was looking through my mom's old photo albums - and I found an old photo of some little girls that I didn't recognize mixed in with some of our own family photos.  Curious, I asked my mother about them.

 "Who are they?" I pointed to the photo of the 2 little girls, one approximately 7, the other maybe age 10.

Mom leaned over and pushed her reading glasses up further on her nose. "Oh....their mom was in the next bed to me when I delivered you. Every Christmas we would send each other photos of our children."

A few minutes later: "So....do you still  keep in touch?" I squinted at the photo, trying to make out the faces.

"No - they moved to Washington State and over the years we lost track of each other."

"So...?...I still don't get it. Why did you keep the photo? " I was curious.

Thoughtful pause.

"Well ....when you were born, you looked so different from the rest of the family, we were certain they switched you at birth - so we kept in touch over the years - just in case....." She shrugged.  "But....after a while it didn't matter."

This was the first time hearing this story.  Incredulous to say the least.

"It didn't matter after a while - you were ours.  We didn't need to keep in touch."

I continued to stare at that old photo.

Yes, I guess it really didn't matter, I thought.

Not anymore.

This was my family, for better or worse, and I am not sure that I would even want to look into Other Possibilities.



I did work for a few years at the hospital at which I was born.   They still had the ancient birth record books. I suppose I could have looked up my name.  Not that it would prove anything.

My mother had given me my little ID necklace with her name on it that they would put on babies in my birth hospital  55 years ago.  The beads were strung onto a very strong thread and then secured around the baby's neck with a blob of lead. (!)

 At the time I worked at that hospital, they were still making the same necklaces - only they were using the wrist/ankle plastic banding method as well.   The beads were more of a souvenir.

 They were reluctant to give up the old tradition -  they still would tie the beads around the neck.  I questioned them on the wisdom of that (or the lack thereof) - since we were instructing our patients never to tie anything around a baby's neck- safety reasons.   

I just handed them to the parents since they weren't used for actual ID-ing.

 I made another one with my name on it.  You can see that I have photo-shopped most of the letters off the white beads so my name is not legible.  It almost makes the beads with letters look like pearls.  The original and actual baby ID necklace I wore as a baby is on the right, the one I made up myself is on the Left.

Whether my ID necklace was put on right at birth....I will never know. My mom was a little foggy at the time...they did the "twilight sleep" back then for deliveries....and babies were whisked away to the nursery.  Mothers were alone in the delivery room back then, so my father wasn't able to confirm that I was the correct baby either.

Oh well.

Still, even though some things are not great in some delivery rooms now,  it's awful to think what they did to mothers back then......to not even know whether the baby handed to you was even yours......and not even feel that you could question the nurses or MD....?

Breast Feeding

I was over at the Man-Nurse Diaries reading some of his past blogposts. I ran across this one - "Dad's Prefer Breast Feeding" and had to chuckle - especially when I looked at his pie chart on why....

It reminded me of a story my mother told me once a while back (she would kill me if she knew I was repeating this, but, uh,  oh well - there isn't anyone I know reading this anyway, except for my girlfriend Jan- and she knows everything about my screwball family so it's gonna be no big news to her!)

 It is one of mom's own breastfeeding stories.

My mother breast fed all of her children - all five of us - in an era that encouraged bottlefeeding - the 1950s.  Or - should I say - actively discouraged breast feeding, so I am quite proud of mom for doing what she thought right when there was so much pressure around her to give it up or made to feel somehow that it was wrong.  It seems that milk production was not a problem for the women in her family.  She took to it really well.

So well, it seems, that at times she sometimes had too much milk - if there is such a problem. (which I don't believe!)  What to do when there was no baby around to feed and there is a little bit of excess and she isn't (for some unknown reason) wanting to pump and save?

So - fast forward to many years later when mom was in a group of women from her church who were discussing breast feeding.  The Pastor's wife had just had her baby and it seems that she had the very same "problem".

Of course she asked my mother, being the experienced and wise sage in the women's group,  what she did when the milk was overflowing and there was no baby to put to the breast.

Mom paused, slightly embarrassed.

"Oh, my husband took care of that" she replied sheepishly with a little smile.

 Way to go Mom.   Not the visual I really wanted.