Heaven's Special Mum

Heaven's Special MumJust off the main building on the open verandah, there are many more little patients. Its not a sunny veranda and it can be cold. The head of each bed is pushed up against the brick wall in a row down the veranda. Each child is fixed in place in some way. This was how Beryl Wyber spent much of her childhood in a hospital system which was overwhelmed by the polio epidemic of the 1930s: confined to a hospital bed at 17 months with spinal TB and allowed

ÒJust off the main building on the open verandah, there are many more little patients. ItÕs not a sunny veranda and it can be cold. The head of each bed is pushed up against the brick wall in a row down the veranda. Each child is fixed in place in some way.Ó This was how Beryl Wyber spent much of her childhood in a hospital system which was overwhelmed by the polio epidemic of the 1930s: confined to a hospital bed at 17 months with spinal TB and allowed to see her mother for only an hour a week. On her release at 13 after 12 years in hospital she is mystified by things she had never experienced. No one had ever shown her a stove, a carpet, a chest of drawers or an electric fan. BerylÕs story of discovery and her building a life in her teens is told by her daughter, author Lorraine Townsend.
My book ÒHeavens Special MumÓ is a moving tribute to the triumph over adversity ending in tragedy which was my MotherÕs life."