General Chat

If i asked you what was the biggest cause of children being reported 'missing' in the forties, I don't think you would have a clue.

Today I saw a specialist re a small operation. I chose a local anaesthetic. The paper said they could put you out if you preferred , by putting a mask over your face and giving you gas.

That brought back so many bad experiences from when I was a child having teeth seen to.

The health department and surrounds used to stink of gas. Children would smell it and promptly scarper, then having to be reported to the police as missing a more leisurely procedure than that of today. Of course we never ever lost one for good.

Your favourite? bad experience, or indeed comments on dentists.

Happy days

Marriage is a way of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred.

My milk teeth came through rotten so a visit to the dentist was a fortnightly experience to have them painted with foul smelling chemicals. The one thing it did do though was make me totally unafraid of dentists. (Doctors are a different matter - with the dentist I know where he's going to prod. doctors have oddles of places to choose from :-D )
Fortunately adult teeth have been fine :-)

Oh Harry that brings back memories. dentists and tonsils both had the horrid mask pushed onto my face and that sickly sweet smell. I was so traumatised by it that in 1961 when I had my first child at the age of 21, I fought off the gas and air and hardly had a whiff. With the second in 67 I flatly refused it.

Not teeth but in the 1940,s after I came home from evacuation we had the nit nurse come around the school . we were always nit free but one time I was called out from class after the visit and given a letter for mum.

Humiliation!!

was sent to the local cleansing station that would take in furniture mattress,s etc to be debugged chemically for bed bugs etc They had a small building with a nurse and other ladies who would wash your hair with delousing shampoo and then comb out each section to remove dead fleas and nits.

Hated the nit nurse coming to the school after that.

Wasnt the one and only time either. Mum had a female lodger who we loved to bits but found she was the source of the problem . She was told clean your head up or go!!

At the age of 4 or 5 I had Scarlet Fever and had to go to an isolation hospital and parents were not allowed in. The hospital became really concerned because I would not eat and I would not play with any toys, even a doll my parents had sent for me. For decades after that I had an awful dread of hospitals. If I had to visit someone in hospital, as soon as I got inside and the smell of disinfectant hit me my tummy would churn, I'd feel queasy, my heart pounded and I would go hot and clammy. I couldn't eat that day and after the visit I wouldn't feel like food till the next day. I had always put it down to being scared as an inpatient aged 4/5.

Then, in my 40s, for the first time I mentioned to my mother I hated hospitals........ and she said she wasn't surprised! Although I knew I'd had treatment for birthmarks as a baby, my mother had not gone into any detail. It seems that I had regular treatment at hospital from being a babe in arms for more than 2 years. My mother told me she had been warned about the treatment before it started as it would be upsetting for her. She said at each appointment, as soon as I saw a man in a white coat I would scream and scream and sob heartbreakingly while he took me away. They treated the birth marks with carbon dioxide snow which would burn the skin. She said she would have to go in the toilets as she couldn't bear to hear me.

As soon as I knew about this, it made sense of why I felt as I did in hospitals and since then I've been absolutely fine about going inside them. It must have been deep in my subconcious, so no wonder the isolation hospital had scared me. :-)

when I was three years old I had to have all my toenails removed :-( I had some infection under them apparently. I well remember having a mesh cover with gauze put over my face and then chloroform was dripped on it until I fell asleep

my poor Mum was in bits and taken her mother [my gran] with her for support - however, transpired that gran was no support whatsoever as she was overcome with nerves resulting in diahorreoa and my mother had to attend to her instead!!

I well remember that mask at the dentist ...and tonsils out....no such thing as an injection then!!

Ah yes, the good old days. The postings make nice (if that;s the word) reading. Thank you for your interest.

Best wishes Happy days

I too remember the nasty rubber mask. Even now, I can't stand the smell of rubber, and have to wash my hands if I use one.
I won't even have rubber bands in my drawer at work, and if I need to use one, for, example keeping letters together, I have been known to ask a colleague to put it on for me. :-S

Spiders? No problem :-D

I had the mask when I had some teeth out at 6. Afterwards I was very ill and ended up in an isolation hospital for 3 months, with injections in my buttocks morning & night - still don't know what I picked up from that dentist, but the hospital stay was barbaric.
I was in a cot, in a room, all by myself. Never allowed out. The only things I had to 'play' with were a puzzle book my parents bought me on one of their 2 visits, and my favourite soft toy - which I couldn't bring home.
Never had a bath. They eventually bathed me on the last day - and we children who were leaving shared the bath water! This was also the first time in 3 months my very long hair was washed - using soap. I screamed when the nurse tried to drag the brush through the matted hair - so she slapped me. First thing my mum had to do was take me to a hairdresser to get my hair cut very short.
This in itself caused a problem, as, because I had been confined to a cot for 3 months, I could hardly walk!

Oh dear...

This has stirred up a hornets nest for me.

So much so, i can't even bring myself to talk about it.

What happened to me when i was 3 years old was sooo traumatic, it has effected my entire life.

I am deeply saddened and so very sorry to read what all of you experienced at such a young age.

Sniff, sob, hiccupp.......

Prickles. xxxx

I was lucky and had no really traumatic experiences as a child, but I did miss lots of school when other children were ill.

The whole class was off for 6 weeks when one child had scarlet fever and I also did 3 weeks quarantine for german measles (twice), mumps, measles and whooping cough. It's a wonder we ever learnt anything!!

was a happy day for me when my little sister got scarlet fever - she was carted off to isolation hospital - she's seven years younger than me and was so naughty, broke my beloved dolls, scribbled over my books and generally made my life a misery

I had mumps, whooping cough, measles, German measles, impetigo and scabies - the latter caught from evacuees in our school - survived them all, but was so ill after the smallpox vaccination - smallpox hit Cardiff big time in the early 60's and more people died of the vaccination than of the disease - I'd never had the vaccination as a child cos my Mum didn't want one of those big "penny" marks of the vaccination on my arm, so it had a real bad effect on me

Oh dear, some suffering, but perhaps good to get it off your chest.

Nit nurses were a bit rough and ready if memory serves. Slaps were a plenty in those days, often coming from all angles.

Thanks again to all who have contributed.

Hapy days

That's one of the major memories of my childhood Harry, the rubber smell of the bung they put inside my mouth to keep it open, and then the smell of gas to knock me out. I sat with my Mother in a big wooden hut with lots of other children and parents, not having any idea what was to happen, I think I was about 6 or 7. I kept seeing children coming out from a room crying with their hands over their mouths and bloody cloths in their hands. I suppose my mother must have taken me on the bus part of the way and we walked the rest. Funnily enough the place where the hut was is very close to my house so I have passed it by thousands of times.

I know I would always suffer from homesickness for many many years and I think that might have been because when we lived with my aunt, my mother went into hospital to have my brother (I was just two) and my aunt told me I used to sit on my potty saying 'Poor Bizzy hasn't got a Mummy' which my lovely Aunt said reduced her to tears every time. I couldn't say my own name then - now Bizzy is part of my email address lol I can't remember the situation but I think it must have had a lasting effect on me.

Lizx

Very graphic Liz. Just how i remember it. Plus a nice little story.

Hay days

my best friend in infant school had nits and always got a card when the nit nurse came to the school - my mother told me not to play with her, but she was my best friend, so I did play with her - every night I had to sit with my head over a newspaper while my mother ran a nit comb through my hair and as my hair was extremely curly this was a pain, but I never got nits of fleas :-D

I had tooth ache when I was about five or six and had to go to the school dentist. We sat in the waiting room with lots of other children and parents, all looking petrified. When my turn came the dentist approached me and started to place the mask over my mouth, I promptly threw up, and he told me Mother to take me home, I never had the tooth out, for some reason it just stopped hurting.

:-D :-D

In 1941 my sister was one of the first babies to have the new Diphtheria inoculation, and parents were encouraged to take their older children along to be done at the same time.

I was 3¾ and can remember being told by the doctor that there was a fairy asleep under the blanket (blister/scab) and I mustn't disturb her. :-) :-)

Aw that's so sweet Andysmum.

I remember the nit Nurse well, and her name. She was like a Hattie Jacques Matron in the carry on films. I don't know who I was more scared of, the Nurse or my Mum. Well we didn't get nits at school and my Mum was spared the trauma of "what will the Neighbours say" if we got them. This was in the late 1960s/early1970s. We were from that time onwards a nit free family

However............

My Mum and Dad looked after my youngest when I was at work. Nursery School sessions were twice a week.

Mum was 66 years old, Dad was 74, my Sibling 28 and I was 31 and we all got nits at the same time. :-D :-D :-D :-D Our little Darling had caught them at Nursery and bought them home.

I do feel there is a place for the nit Nurse, sadly there is no longer one in schools. The eldest was finally free from the never ending nit cycle once Primary school was at an end.

The only thing which seemed to help was daily combing and if the little blighters were there was to shampoo, put conditioner on and to comb through. It seemed to get rid of them quickly :-D

Sorry Harry, was it too graphic?

I never had nits nor did my brothers, as far as I can remember No idea why not. Maybe with me it was because my hair was so thin and fine they couldn't cling on lol but my middle brother had very tight curls so lots of hiding places there.

Lizx