Learning to grow

I spent a week in a London Ontario Children's hospital. Victoria Memorial Children's hospital as it was known at the time. We finally were getting to the bottom of my stalled growth. I was the oldest kid on the floor. I was eighteen at the time. My predicament paled in comparison to the other kids on the floor. My room had four beds. Beside me was a boy dealing with leukemia and another who had to roll down the hallway like a crab, he had some kind of spin issue. I was just there to get tested. For what, we would have to wait and see.

I spent the early hours of the day being carted off to various tests. In the early evenings I would spend my time helping the kids do crafts and after, I flirted with various nurses. There was one nurse I like the most. Unfortunately, she was a one floor down. What was I to do? I soon discovered a tube at the nurse’s station. I had seen it in action, and I was impressed. I had an a-ha moment. "If I sent a note down would my honey receive it" I wrote it and she received it. It was all tubes and whooshes. I would receive little playful notes with hearts, x and o's. I think we finally got caught but it was fun. What wasn't fun. More tests. I was a walking pin cushion. After a week my endocrinologist Dr. Jenner, came in and said they had narrowed it down. I wasn't a dwarf, or should I say a little person and with the treatment I could grow. 

I was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency. The result of underactive pituitary gland, known today as hypopituitary. I was one of the first in Canada to be treated for it. Growth hormone at the time was very expensive but luckily the London Rotary club help us out. 

My mother received her instructions on how to be a pain in the ass. Literally. Every morning I'd wake up and moon my mother. She was a nurse’s aide for years and I couldn't ask for a better caregiver. I'm sure she felt nervous shoving a three-inch-long needle into my butt cheek every day. She had to do it twice a day. Growth hormone in the morning and testosterone at night. She really wasn't a pain the ass but the needles, that's another story.

The growth spurts were painful, and I lived in a hot water soaker tub for a while. Just kidding. It was the only way to get a little relief. When I say little, I mean hardly at all. Was it worth it? I was blessed to be living at a time when I could get medical help, and I was even more blessed to have parents who cared so much for their little man. The thing that wasn't so great was going to London to document my progress.

Height and weight. You expect that but to see how I really measured up, they had to really measure me up. Every three months. Height, weight, hand and shlong size. That is no stretch and you can't stretch when the measuring device is a cold twelve-inch-long steel ruler. Shrinkage was involved and they didn’t care. I always heard the same "Hmm, you’re doing fine see you in three months" story. But there is one more.

In the next story I will be closing out my teen years with my most embarrassing moment ever. I will call it the intern.