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THE DIARY
March 2nd to 5th. During these few days Jean became increasingly
difficult about her food. She ate little and appeared angry or unhappy at
mealtimes. This puzzled me until I overheard her say to herself, “Don’t
eat it. Better not eat it or you’ll go to sleep.” So, although I had
planned to give her only about a week to adjust to the idea of an operation
and a stay in hospital, I decided to begin telling her at the first
opportunity lest her eating disturbance was in fact connected with fantasies
about anaesthetics.
March 6th. Today I told Jean that she would go to hospital one
day to have her tonsils taken out. I chose a moment when she was complaining
about having to stay in the house because of a sore throat and cold. Together
we looked out of the window and named the children who had been ill and were
now well again. I pointed out two children who had had their tonsils out, and
Jean added two more names to the list.
She said, “I wouldn’t like to
go to hospital without you. I would want you all the time. I wouldn’t stay
there.” I told her that I would stay with her in the hospital. She said, “All
the mummies don’t stay with their children all the time in hospital. Why don’t
they? Susan’s mummy didn’t stay with her.” I reminded her that Susan’s
mummy had visited her every day instead: “Susan is a bigger girl than you
are. She goes to school and is used to being away from her mummy.” Jean
said, “Susan didn’t like it when
she didn’t see her mummy in the night, did she?” I agreed that Susan had
been a bit unhappy, but because she was seven she could wait until the morning
for her mummy; and told her I knew that girls of four wanted their mummies to
stay with them, but added that when she was bigger she wouldn’t mind
sometimes being without her mummy.
I told her very briefly what would
happen in hospital—that she would go to sleep, her tonsils would be taken
out, and that we would stay in hospital for three days. She did not ask for
more information.
March 8th. At breakfast she examined her fork, and said, “This
fork would dig right into my throat, and it would hurt. I’ve got a big hole
in my throat, haven’t I?” Later she asked for the stories of Laura and
Tonsil Boy. “Why do the doctors wear that thing on their faces? Why must
they not cough germs at the ill children? Can I cough at you?”
March 9th. Jean saw me open a tin with a tin opener as she had
often done before; She handled the tin opener for a few minutes, and then
asked: “What’s this for? What do you do with it?” Twice during the day
she asked to be told the story of Laura and Tonsil Boy.
When an ambulance stopped outside
our flats she said, “Look! The ambulance has stopped because someone is ill.”
And later, “It’s all right, it has gone now.” (There is an ambulance
station in our road, and she sees many ambulances every day.) Later when she
saw an ambulance driver walk by she remarked, “It’s all right now. He is
going home to tea round the corner.”
March 10th. Jean stopped in the middle of her lunch, lay back and
sucked her thumb. I asked if she was tired. She sat up and said, “A little
girl has died. Michael said she didn’t die, but she has.” I asked, “Why did
she die?” and Jean answered, “Because it was time for her to die.” I told her
that little girls did not die when they had their tonsils out. She
asked, “Why don’t they? They might if the Doctor couldn’t get their
tonsils out properly.”
I again explained the hospital
procedure, and Jean ran to get the Laura and Tonsil Boy pictures. As I went
through them with her, she added some remembered explanations. She counted
each picture as a day. For the rest of the day she was active and cheerful,
but she slept badly.
March 11th. At breakfast Jean made a fuss about the salt cellar.
She refused to let anyone else have use of it, because she wanted to have one
of her very own. “Can I buy one for myself on Saturday with my own pocket
money?”
March 12th. At teatime she cut her poached egg very carefully,
saying, “I want it (the yolk) to run out.” She watched her Daddy having
tea half an hour later, and said, “Look, when Daddy cuts his egg it all runs
out.” (A week before this record started Jean had said, “When all the
blood runs out of cut and hurt people they die.”) She put her thumb and
first finger in her mouth and pinched the back of her tongue, remarking, “It
hurts when I do it.”
March 14th. Jean saw a picture of a man, a prisoner being led
between two policemen; and for the next twenty minutes she questioned me
persistently about “naughty men.” “Do children go away when they are
very naughty? Were you naughty, Mummy? Did you go away when you were little?”
I spoke of the coming hospitalization, and we talked about the reasons for it.
March 15th. At lunch she talked again of knives and forks being
sharp. 'They could poke our throats,' she said, then ate her lunch mostly with
her fingers. She pretended to cut my hand and arm with a knife. She asked to
be shown the sharp end, then pushed it into her mouth very slowly and
carefully until it appeared to touch the back of her throat. She then withdrew
it. She said nothing.
March 16th. After breakfast Jean had a temper tantrum and
aggressively banged a drum until the top caved in. In the afternoon, while
listening to a radio program playing records for children in hospital, she sat
handling a little fruit knife. For a quarter of an hour as she listened she
made cutting movements on the chair arm, the table, the cushions, my arm, hand
and face. When the program had finished, she asked, “Why are those children
in hospital? When will they go home again? Read me Tonsil Boy and Laura.”
March 17th. Several times today I saw Jean standing quietly
putting her thumb and first finger far into her mouth with a pinching
movement.
March 19th. Jean bought a gun with her pocket money, and played
shooting for the rest of the day. Later she wanted explosive caps to make
bigger bangs.
March 20th. She had no interest in games other than shooting—the
bigger the bang the more she liked it.
March 21st. This was the first fine day of spring, and our family
went strolling in the park. Jean drew attention to herself by shooting
everyone she met. When her explosive caps were finished, she wanted to go
immediately to buy more and was furious when told it was Sunday and the shops
were closed. She could find no pleasure in the park, and asked to be taken
home.
March 22nd. There has been no mention of hospital for several
days, but Jean has become very aggressive toward me and has scratched and
bitten her sister with very little provocation.
March 23rd. Her very aggressive behaviour continues.
March 24th. Today Jean overheard an adult talk about a child who
had been killed on the road. I spoke with her later about it, but she would
not admit that a child could be killed on the road in this way.
March 25th. Her aggressive behaviour continues. Temper tantrums in
which she throws herself on the floor at the slightest upset have become
rather frequent. As she had not mentioned the coming operation for a week, I
decided to reintroduce the topic.
After a tantrum I linked her
behaviour to the operation, and she talked willingly about it. “They will
hurt me. Very ill people go to hospital, and they have to go in an ambulance.
I don’t want to go.” At bedtime she said, “Wash my hands when I’m in
bed. I’ll shut my eyes tightly, then I won’t know that you are doing it.”
March 26th. Jean awoke in the night screaming. She complained
tearfully, “It hurts, it hurts!” and pointed into her mouth as if at an
aching tooth. After an aspirin and half an hour in my bed she returned to her
own room and slept. This morning I took her to the dentist, but he could find
nothing to cause toothache. This morning Jean did not notice when I undid her
nightdress because we were talking. With delight and surprise she explained
this to me. “It was just like my tonsils, I did not feel you do it.”
March 27th, 28th, and 29th. Many aggressive outbursts.
March 30th. When asked not to scratch her sister, she said, “‘Well,
we didn’t talk about the hospital yesterday. That’s why!” She found
Laura and Tonsil Boy and asked to be told and retold their stories. She dug
her fingers into her mouth, and asked, “Which bits of skin will the doctor
take away?”
March 31st. At bedtime Jean asked with a whisper for both hospital
stories. A few minutes before she had been examining her navel, asking what it
was and how it came.
April 1st. We bought some puzzles and other oddments to occupy
her while in hospital, and Jean put them in a case under her bed. This evening
she took longer than usual to settle down. When I gave her usual dose of
Anthisan (the drug used to control her allergy) she told me to put the bottle
into the case with her hospital things. When I said the Anthisan should not go
into the case, because it was not yet her turn to go to hospital, her
restlessness subsided and she slept.
April 2nd. Today has brought many minor accidents—for instance
she caught her thumb in her tricycle and later caught her foot in a chair. Her
skin is more sensitive than of late, her eyes and skin become inflamed very
easily, and her tummy and thighs show signs of having been scratched a lot.
April 4th. Several of the children were playing hospital in the
garden, and Jean was the patient.
April 5th. She talked of other children known to her who had been
to hospital. Some time after she had been settled for the night, she called
out, “I want to play with the hospital puzzle.”
April 6th. Jean had a very active and happy day. When I discussed
with her sister the arrangements for her care while Jean and I were away, Jean
asked “Why?” as if the whole idea were new to her, and added, “But I don’t
want to go to hospital.”
At teatime Katherine complained of
stomach-ache. Jean asked, “Has Katherine got a pain like Susan? Will she
have to go to hospital?” Later she asked me to list those of her friends who
had been to hospital. She agreed to some names, but denied others. She asked
to have a bandage over her eyes.
April 8th. When I told Jean that this was the day for us to go to
hospital, she flushed and said, ~‘I don’t want to go to hospital—not
today. Let’s go tomorrow.” Half an hour later she said, “Can I take my
party dress? Can I take three dresses, and three cardigans? I’ll play
outside for a few days (I) first.” And later still she said, “I might not
want to come home again. I might want to stay there.”
Saying that she might want them,
she asked to take two dollies, dolly blankets, a windmill, and many other
toys. To her sister she said, “Mummy will be with me
and you won’t see her.”
She played in the garden with her
friends for the next hour, dancing and skipping about and behaving as if she
were going to a party. She boasted of where she was going. Now and again she
came in to me with an anxious face. “I don’t want to go to the hospital
today,” and almost in the same breath, “When is Daddy coming to take us to
the hospital?
—Daddy must come and bring stamps
to me every day.—When my tonsils are out I won’t keep getting ill.—When I come home my tonsils will be all gone.—I
won’t know when the doctor takes out my tonsils.”