My Mother's Story

My Mother's Story

Patients

Stacey Bayles

October 2010

Stacey Bayles

Text - Online contribution

Online contribution

In 1939, Helen Campbell was six years old living in Stigler, Oklahoma. She lived with her father and mother, Marion and Bernice Campbell, and her older sister and brother, Marian and Billy Joe Campbell. As a result of a skin test administered at her elementary school, she tested positive for tuberculosis (TB).  Although she did not have an active case of TB, her aunt, who was a registered nurse, made arrangements for her and her 10-year old cousin, Jimmie Isborne, who had also tested positive for tuberculosis, to be admitted to the Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium's Harper Building, where they were isolated from family members with TB. My mother has few memories of her time at the sanatorium which can be attributed to her youth, but she recalls playing jacks on the sidewalk, having a door closed on her finger, walking to the Service Building to watch movies in the auditorium, taking castor oil in juice, drinking milk from pint glass bottles, riding on the shoulders of a staff member, having her tonsils removed, and her exhilaration when her family visited and her distress when they left. She was more fortunate than most children at Harper as her family visited often, traveling a relatively short distance from Stigler to Talihina, but over hilly, one-lane gravel roads. When my grandmother learned that her niece, Jimmie Isborne, was healthy enough to be discharged from the sanatorium she made arrangements for my mother to be discharged at the same time. My grandmother was instructed that my mother was should receive plenty of rest, fresh air, and nutritious food, as that the family should observe basic hygiene practices that included no kissing on the lips, not sharing food with others, not drinking from a glass or water dipper used by others, not spitting on the ground, and washing your hands often. Today, my mother says that she never felt sick enough to be institutionalized and that she does not remember being mistreated while there, but that the experience undoubtedly shaped her life. She and her family did not share that she had primary tuberculosis or had been institutionalized because of the negative reaction by friends and others.  My mother taught my brother and I the same basic hygiene practices that she learned from my grandmother as preventative measures against the spread of any communicable disease. Today, my mother is a healthy and active sister, wife, mother, grandmother to our family, and a friend to others who have enriched her life over the years and I am truly blessed that she is my mother.