Was it because I am generally stubborn and think I can take care of everything? Probably.
Was it because I have an inbred suspicion of doctors and all modern medicine that was genetically passed down from my ancestors? Maybe.....
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I LOATHE laziness. Somewhere along the line I equated napping, or resting with laziness. My entire family are poster children for ADD. We are kind of proud of it actually. We had the benefits of strong parents that just constantly told us to sit down, shut up, and act right! No, actually we had parents that expected children to be active, energetic and a bunch of pains in the rear for busy adults. We were told to find something to do with ourselves or Mom would find work for us to do. That was not hard on a 65 acre farm!
Our play mimicked the work we saw all around us going on. As we grew older work was more and more esteemed and applauded, necessary and then later PAID! We all wanted to be applauded, we all wanted to be PAID! So any way, I grew up valuing work. Not all work looked the same, but if it was productive it became my definition of work.
But really, is that why I waited to go to the doctor for so long?
My Grannie Katie once told me when I was a young girl that I was a born mountain woman, never mind that I was only born in the hills and hollers of Indiana, she said. "You are definitely a mountain woman." At the time I did NOT take that as a compliment. For most of my 44 years I have tried to shy away from my Appalachian roots. In the last 10 years or so I have slowly seen the wisdom of being who you were meant to be though. Part of that for me is that of "mountain woman."
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nursingpins/4697852283/
I now know that Grannie Katie meant I had the heart and ideas that would steer me through an old fashioned mountain woman's life. One of those not so endearing qualities is self reliance. We mountain woman types can begin to think that the whole family's welfare rests on our shoulders. That if we don't do it NO ONE is gonna do it! That we have to sacrifice unnecessarily for the benefit of the rest of the family.
Well, this mountain woman was very happy to have the E.R., antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory drugs when I needed them!
I began to wonder this week how the Indiana pioneers handled illness and what their attitudes toward doctoring was like. I had a pretty good idea from an earlier project researching the life of Dr.Charles Smullen of Fairview, Fayette County, and then later Raleigh, Rush County, Indiana. I lived in his house for a few years. His life and that of his two wives were so intriguing that I researched them. I found a great deal of similarities between us too, and wanted to know more.
The medical profession was sort of hit or miss for a great deal of time here in Indiana - and any new areas being settled. A bit of information from the Conner Prairie website will give you a more in-depth idea of what was going on here in Indiana at the time of settlement. Basically, though, lack of sanitation and sanitary procedures, the isolation from growing knowledge of the medical profession, and the lack of many truly qualified doctors, all made the medical profession very suspicious and there fore not trusted.
These settlers had made it through wilderness and Indians, horrible weather and beasts, deprivation and isolation - so what about a few ailments? They could muddle through and tough it out! Or so many thought, and so I thought.
I have finally conceded that I am not 19 years old any more and I cannot go for 30 hours a day like I used to. Now that I have given myself that gift I am enjoying naps for the first time in my life. I do still wake with a bit of guilt that I should have been up doing housework, or writing, or.... but it does not linger too long. It knows when it's not welcome. I am convalescing....hahaha!
http://www.gothicgourds.com/fascinators/woman-on-fainting-couch-reading/
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