Mom and Dad (along with many other Pentecostals in those days) trusted God for their healing and did not go to doctors when the kids were young.
Mom had all the homeopathic medicines down pat. She was ?on-call??? to the sick neighbors. We all got dosed with a paste of sulfur with syrup in the fall and something else in the spring ?to clean us out good.???
When I was four, I swallowed a large safety pin. (After all, Mom always had something in HER mouth–either thread or a pin, or something.) I started gagging and thought I was going to die. Mom got out the castor oil–gave me a tablespoon–and watched my stools for the monster pin.
While still very young, I decided that I was old enough to use the ax and decided to make ?chips??? for kindling. Mom told me ?No,??? but I did it anyway. After getting a few chips, the ax slid off the wood and laid my shin open about 1/2 inch deep, 1 – 1/2 inches long. I was scared and just knew I was going to die. Mom didn?t show any sympathy for me whatsoever. She said, ?That?s what happens when you disobey.??? She finally got the bleeding stopped, cleansed it, put Watkins salve on it, and pushed it together. She tied it up with a strip made from old sheets that she had disinfected in the oven and kept for the purpose of bandages.
At age five or six, I was sitting in a chair backwards–my legs through the back of the chair. The chair fell over, and I sprained both ankles at the same time!
Mom had a large goiter on her neck from thyroid problems. Later, it was so large that the doctor said she had a 50/50 chance of dying if she had it removed. By that time she had several little ones, so the goiter stayed.
Mom and Dad were in a wreck on their way to church one day. I rarely missed church, but I had a weird feeling that I shouldn?t go and told them that I was staying home to wash my hair. I knew something was wrong before I ever heard the news. A drunk man, going very fast, hit them and pushed the pickup bed into the cab. Mom was spitting up blood, but she wouldn?t go to the doctor. Mom told me that she didn?t get a doctor for Marion when he died, and she could still hear his cries of pain in her dreams. For that reason she wouldn?t get a doctor for herself. She had problems from the accident until her death at age 68.