Owing to family circumstances, my mother Maymie left school at 14 and went to work in an office in Perth, Scotland. From her diary, here is the story of how she, with just one kidney, came to have three healthy children.
I was coming home for lunch in a tram with Clem Scott, one of my office friends. I was wearing a new dress which I had coveted for some weeks in a shop window and when I got off the tram it was raining. Instead of waiting for the tram to move on, I ran around the back of it to cross the road, right into the path of a Puller’s lorry. Pullers were the big cleaners and dyers in Perth. It hit me and I clutched at the radiator cap but it was hot, so I had to let go and fell under one of the front wheels, which went over my body, more or less at waist level. I crawled out and stood up. Someone came and held me and I was carried into a nearby garage and laid on a table. Miss Glass, who was Lady Superintendent of the GA was on the tram and she came and sent for the ambulance. Meanwhile, someone fetched Aunt Dodo, who has that was at home with a cold. She came running, still clutching in her hands the knives and forks which she had been laying on the table. The lorry driver was there, looking very white-faced and I remember telling him that it was my own fault and not his. His name was James Cameron and he sometimes came to the hospital while I was there, just sitting and turning his cap round and round on his knee. Later, for years, if I met him in the street he used to stop and hold my hand for a minute. While I lay in the garage waiting for the ambulance, I kept thinking that I didn’t want to die but I thought I might have bad spinal injuries and be in a wheelchair for life like my mother. All the same, I felt strangely calm. We went to the hospital, the Perth Royal Infirmary. It was Derby Day and I had a bob or two on a horse and that was on my mind too. I was also worried about the embarrassment of being undressed. The next bit is rather hazy but I never lost consciousness. I remember being on the trolley and being given some kind of anaesthetic. The first bit of luck was that it was the operating day of a noted surgeon from Dundee. He came to PRI one day a week. I came around quickly because it was found that no operation could take place until there was permission from my father who was next of kin, so they brought me back to consciousness. My father was not to be found and it turned that he was in Dundee at a cricket match. A board was quickly made up and carried round the pitch asking Mr Latto to go at once to the pavilion. He gave the necessary permission and I was taken to theatre. Professor Price did a wonderful rush job, removing my right kidney which was ruptured and bleeding and opening my tummy and doing the necessary joining up so that the other kidney could take over. Of course, I knew nothing of the details of this until some days later. I came round feeling rather sick but I was covered by a sort of large cage with an electric bulb inside, very pretty, which kept me warm and was an anti-shock device. The strange thing was that at no time was I in any pain. It became apparent that I had a tube draining out of my left side and a catheter in my bladder. The ward sister was tall, elderly and thin, Sister Scott, and she was kindness itself and so were all the nurses, especially Nurse Murray and Staff Nurse Rettie. It was decided by the doctors that I must not have anything to eat and only sips of water until they were sure that the other kidney had taken over, so I had to be fed by the bowel which meant another tube which had to be put in and out and I didn’t like that very much. It was rather trying to see people having meals, cups of tea, Ovaltine etc and the days weren’t broken up, but I enjoyed the life on the ward and the coming and going and of course I had visitors, but only family for quite some time This went on for three weeks until one day, the sister brought me a thin slice of bread and butter and a small cup of weak tea and said “Go on, have a go”. It tasted like absolute heaven and they decided that nothing dramatic was going wrong. I was presented a day or two later with a plate of tripe. It looked like stewed knitting and I was none to keen to try it, but there was a nice bland white sauce and it wasn’t too bad. Thereafter I was allowed food but it all had to be bland – white meat, tripe, fish, chicken, no eggs, beef etc. One night a new nurse asked me if I would like Bovril for my nightcap and I agreed joyously, but, poor girl, she got into trouble as that was definitely not on my menu. When I was able to sit up, nurse Rettie who was engaged to a doctor, was sewing her trousseau and asked me to hem some undies for her. In all, there were seven weeks in hospital, gradually getting up for short periods. It was a lovely summer and sometimes my bed was pushed out onto the balcony where I could see the visitors arriving. Four weeks exactly to the day I was admitted, blood was found on my sheet and there was a great deal of excitement and worry before they realised that, right on time, I was having my period. This was considered a wonderful thing and showed that that part at least was working properly.
Maymie and the lorry
