I wasn't at all well for a couple of years, sort of getting colds and feeling sort of chesty and I was at boarding school and, you know, not really… nothing happened, you know nobody sort of took much notice. And then we went on holiday with my parents and I started to feel extremely ill, really very ill. And it was at the end of the war and I got a terribly, terribly sore throat.
Anyway, we came home but I had to walk a long way so eventually when I got home the doctor came, I was really quite ill. And so it was diagnosed as rheumatic fever with all the complications. Which does end up you know, as I learnt, with valvular heart problems. Anyway it took a long time to get over that but I did eventually, of course, sort of live a relatively normal life but I could never run again or do anything like that. But one learned to live with it and I was told never to marry, never to have children. But of course that is a long time ago, in the 1940s. But I didn't do sport or anything which I had loved before. But I managed and then I finally left home and went to live in London, because I lived up in Derbyshire. And lived in London, 'cause I was determined to get away 'cause they were looking after me a bit too much. (I'm cutting out an awful lot...) And so I had a bed-sit and thoroughly enjoyed living in London but you know even then I used to get palpitations sometimes and daren't tell anyone, you know and I daren't tell my parents because they I would have been home straight away.
Anyway, so really from then, things deteriorated slowly. I was told never to have children and I lost 2 full-term babies, actually, but I did manage to have 2 children full-term and we adopted a child. What can I say, you know, life just… when I was busy I was just exhausted: I was exhausted all the time, actually. It was just one life of exhaustion but I was OK. |
