CHAPTER 9 - MY FIRST AND LAST TRAIN TRIP


Bud's sister, Edna, packed my suitcase with things I would need on the train and fixed my hair into a French braid so that it would not snarl. Mom Schoenfelder let me have two of her best down pillows to take along. Had I known the nurse was going to leave them on the train and make no effort to get them back, I would have refused the luxury of Mom's expensive pillows.

It was necessary for Bud to do it "our way" to Cheyenne, Wyoming, because there were no passenger trains coming into Rapid City at that time. The selected nurse, who insisted on being respectfully called Miss Ridley, rode in our car with us. We didn't need her. We just had to buy another hamburger at the drive-in. Bud referred to her as "Miss Buttinski" and personally took great care of all my needs. We really enjoyed that three-hundred-mile trip. I told a story to Dennis until he fell asleep. My hastily made-up tale was the first of many stories about a little pixie who was six inches tall and looked just like Dennis. His name was "Alec The Pixie". The stories were similar to the "dreams" Rae and I used to tell each other when we were small. "Alec's" adventures always included Dennis. These stories eventually grew into a homemade, hand-illustrated book that helped make my son see some value in his flaccid mother.

In Cheyenne, Bud carried me onto the train and went back to the car for the respirator and my satchel. The nurse let him carry her suitcase as well. In our small stateroom, Miss Ridley strapped me into the chest respirator, and then we found that it would not run on the train's current. She removed the respirator from me so I could breathe on my own and crawled onto the upper berth for a nap. Bud called an electrician who would not be available until we reached Salt Lake City, because the train had to leave Cheyenne on schedule. Bud and Dennis reluctantly left me at the mercy of the sleeping Miss Ridley.

I was determined not to call her, to see if she would eventually realize her obligation to me. She awoke and suggested we order food. She knew my beauty shop owners and friends had given me a large sack of coins. They said it was for tips on the train and goodies I might want. She got rid of it all before the trip ended.

Bud raced to Salt Lake on the highway with Dennis but the train rolled in ahead of them. Miss Ridley got off the train to stretch her legs and look for the electrician, whom she could not find. The train started to pull out and she had to run down the tracks as it slowly moved away. She barely caught the staircase and came back to me. A friendly redcap had been talking to me and making me feel that at least somebody knew I was there in that compartment.

"The electrician is on board and will ride with us to Las Vegas," a trainman told us. The electrician was riding with us and that's all he did. He could not make the respirator work for many miles. I was unbearably fatigued and Miss Ridley was again resting in the upper berth.

At Las Vegas Bud came on the train with a battery for the respirator, but by then the electrician had initiated the twelve-volt system required. Bud left the battery anyway and departed. In my agony and desperation, I asked Miss Ridley to strap me in and out of the shell several times per hour, and she scolded me for disturbing her rest. After all, she "had worked a full shift before we left the hospital."

A sandstorm struck just after we departed Las Vegas. Miss Ridley closed my window but the gritty sand came in the cracks and covered my perspiring body. The heat was intense. Air-conditioning was somewhere in the future. My hair was full of sand. My blankets and pillows were full of sand. My untouched food was full of sand. The respirator was pumping but I couldn't sleep. We took it off. I was so tired I could not breathe with it off and it hurt too much with it on, so we put it on...took it off...on....off. Miss Ridley showed no compassion and was a female Dr. Bailey. Her attitude was what was I trying to do to her? The train was stalled for five hours due to the sandstorm. The tracks had to be inspected for miles ahead and sand shoveled away so the train would not be derailed.

Sleepless and exhausted, I noticed that buildings were going by very close to my window. We were in the city! When at long last we halted at Union Station in Los Angeles Miss Ridley said there was a mob of reporters waiting to interview the woman in the iron lung. I was not in the portable machine, so she started putting me into it because she wanted them to see the worst. I told Miss Ridley to "just get me out of here, and decline the interview!"

Rachel and Paul were somewhere in the crowd waiting for my arrival. They boarded the train and I begged them to talk to the reporters and just let me go quietly to the ambulance that had waited five hours extra to transport me to the hospital. The crowd, nevertheless, followed me on the ambulance gurney until I was safely inside. Rae and Paul said they would come to the hospital later, and stayed to satisfy the news people.

Miss Ridley sat beside me as the ambulance screamed through the streets of Los Angeles, to nearby Hondo (now Downey) where Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center is located. I was ushered into the women's Ward K where an iron lung was waiting for me, in a row of others pumping each patient's breath.

I fell asleep within a minute after air was sent rushing into my lungs.




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