[1951-03-08] That Hospital Gown

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Clipping from 3/8/1951

Vanity plagues the feminine contingent at an early age. Our only grand-daughter, Caroline, now 10, has broken her wrist; hardly a break, either, but enough injury to require an X-ray and a day's hospitalization. They put her to bed, took her temperature every three hours, gave her pills and shots and then an anesthetic while the bone was set, and even made her ride downstairs to the taxi in a wheel chair. "I dont' get it!" she told the taxi driver. "All I had was a broken arm." She has been home from school all week, going to the doctor every other day and lying around the house with the arm elevated much of the time in between.

When it was finally decided she needed the day in the hospital, she really enjoyed the experience which was her first of the kind. She got quite a kick out of all the hospital routine, and made friends with the other girls in the ward -- one had an operation on both eyes, another surgery on her throat which had been cut when she swallowed something sharp, etc.

But one thing really got her down and seemed the greatest indignity she had ever had thrust upon her. At bedtime that night she murmured, "I knew I'd have to have the hypo and all those other things, but why did I have to wear that horrible hospital gown!" -- Hope.