When Your Child is Ill

My parents owned hundreds of books, belonged to several book-of-the month clubs, and considered books worthy of display in one's home; much like art. The only books hidden away were written by Mr. Alfred Kinsey. But, never fear; I found them anyway as a naive but curious twelve year old, stashed in the back of the guestroom closet. I read fast, furiously, and frequently, always careful to put the books back in their not-so-childproof hiding place. In retrospect, those books taught me things no one else bothered to educate me about.

But I digress, wildly off topic.

If there was something or someone that started me on the path, it would definitely be the innocent looking book entitled: When Your Child is Ill by Samuel Karelitz, M.D. This hardcover book-of-the month selection from 1958 found  a prominent spot among the books in our living-room bookshelf. I don't think Mom read the book but I certainly did. Voraciously.

The introductory remarks in this book includes the following passage....
"When Your Child is Ill is a book for intelligent mothers. It is not a substitute for the doctor: it tells her when she needs him (love that); and it helps to answer the questions parents often ask themselves before and after the doctor's visit. Dr. Karelitz's object in writing for parents so fully and frankly is not to alarm but to inform and how to treat her sick child herself, but rather to tell her what symptoms to look for and which are danger signals.  This book, so full of facts, will also be of use to nurses, school matrons (huh?) and social workers--in fact to any person who may have to deal with sick children."


This book simultaneously scared me to death and pulled me back into its pages with a kind of warped fascination. I was a healthy kid but succumbed to the usual: measles, chickenpox, and croup-like upper respiratory illnesses. Whenever I was sick enough to stay home from school, I'd pull this book off the shelf and devour the pages that discussed whatever symptoms were most prominent in the moment. The problem was (and to this day); whatever complication there might be from any relatively benign illness......I figured I'd get. Meningitis, encephalitis, rabies, liver failure.....and on it went.

Mom eventually confiscated this book from me. "You get too upset when you read this.", she'd say. I'd beg her let me read just a bit more. If the book disappeared, it was never well hidden. I'd always find the book and read voraciously about all manner of horrid thing that might happen.

Did this book fuel a budding interest in things medical?  I believe so. When my parents moved from Aruba back to Texas and were packing up their belongings, I spied this book and felt a peculiar bond. Mom told me to take it, jokingly. I was just finishing up my first year of medical school at the time and had come to Aruba for a last visit home.  That was 35 years ago, 1977.

I never see this book, which resides in the back on my closet with other old books, that I don't stop and remember a very young, impressionable girl.