Leggings - Hemp and Greed!

Before the “Lee's” and the end of too interesting times and the deaths of many of my close 'friends' who had sworn to bring me up until the last one standing….

I was sent out on a mission to Saudi Arabia. I think I may have been with Lloyd, and/or with a medical Doctor… There was plenty of very clever new thinking medical men since the war had ended.

The Shah had a son who had the same or similar condition I have – Spinal Bifida, and mine had been closed early on, and I had been restrung to his careful measurements – so that I could learn to walk and keep on walking to a late age. I went with him to help him prove what he offered.

When we got there it was explained to their Doctors the whole procedure and he showed them the evidence so that they could see how it all worked. There was great astonishment and also disquiet.

It was almost as if we had conspired against Allah's wishes… against nature who got rid of all the weakest.

Later when I was alone and playing in the sunny courtyard, the story goes, and it is a story for I cannot really remember properly if it happened or not…

That some men set on me and pulled me limb from limb.

They told the Doctor to prove to the Shah that he could do what he promised to his son, he should put me back together.

He was distraught. I wasn't all there then. He restrung my body with Hemp, wood, and one metal ring, the worst damage was a cross lateral swing only I can't say it all happened there, for some of it happened in the war.

When I came around, he cried, for he saw as his fault for being so proud as to come to Saudi Arabia to say he could mend children. We left Saudi Arabia very quickly, before I was well. He didn't even ask to help the Shah's son. He was very upset.

After the accident in the mine he came again, and helped put me back together. The damage to my legs and face etc, was terrible. He was the most gentle man. He said that in fifty years time the wood in my back would break. The metal ring would fall through. Then each separate 'cradle' of Hemp would disintegrate through the body and finally sweat out through the feet. He had read up Egyptian medicine and was convinced that there was a way to help people which had been tried out before.

Of course you could say I was having you on. What a laugh! My medical notes have disappeared of my childhood. However the stages which should leave me with bones, muscles and energy enough to carry myself along is well underway.

I can feel it. The bottom of the cross lateral 'cradle' is gone. The rib cradle is slipping downwards… The shoulder blades were pierced in the middle and he claimed that by putting a natural bone plug to run into place as the 'cradle' went down, the bone would meld into one again. All the material which held it together would then disappear altogether.

He said at the time he was disbelieved. I wish I knew his name now.

He maintained that people with Spinal Bifida would be very clever if the condition was treatable.

The Doctors at Berne at the refuge camp there, said I might have a hump later on due to how I'd been treated. Perhaps this is true too.

The Doctor said he would never again seek to help another human.  He went to America and made the 'Rosebud' dolls which he named after me. At first he used the same techniques to string the dolls. Later to my relief they were made of plastic… and had no strings at all.

I think he gave Grandad some, or came to see me with the Lee's – and was upset when he saw that I didn't recall him clearly…   My Uncle Scott  was so upset, when he realized I might never recover he went up the mountain and didn't come down…  LLoyd was quite sarcastic about that.  I felt lost.

I was woken again by loud woman's voices mentioning the same person around 2am. How greedy they are…  I'm glad to know that she's safe in the US today.  God bless you!