Ron Johnson talks about TB

Ron Johnson talks about TB

Health

Ron Johnson talks about his experience of having TB as a child

East Midlands Oral History Archive

EMOHA

East Midlands Oral History Archive

1950s

You may use this item in accordance with the licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/

.mp3

English

Oral History

2min 29sec

All I can remember is very young having a great lump on my neck. I remember being in the Infirmary and then transferred to Markfield, then I must have gone to school at Elbow Lane and from there it reoccurred and I was in to Groby Road then, twice, until sort of was eleven, so the war had already started so that’s where my vague memory of whatever was happening in my family, my siblings, were happening at that time ‘cause I was not living there [laughs] I was in Groby Road. They quite often drew the fluid off by injection but then I had two operations which the scar’s there. Whatever McKenzie, who was the Chief Medical Officer at that time, remember him well acting like a father to everybody. It was a children’s ward by the way at Groby Road and we sort of lived an almost a normal life as a family, the whole, there were eight of us really, eight children, as far as we were concerned quite normal life, living you know. We had lots of people, old aunties and what have you, looked forward to visits on a Sunday. Debatable whatever happens afterwards because quite late in life I caught a thing called sarcoidosis which is a broad brother to TB and it reduces your lung capacity, that’s you know one of them things. But, as I say, whatever McKenzie did to us I think I know at least three, or there were in the last few years, three people who still survived other than myself.

Colin Hyde

Ron Johnson

Leicester