One thing is clear: when you read Bonnie's story, you will know immediately that she is a true hero. As a very young child, she was told that she would never make it to age eighteen. When she fooled all the doctors and was still living and breathing at age 18, she was told she would NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN.
Bonnie defied everyone -- most notably her own mother -- and delivered three healthy children in 1986, _______, and ________.
Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis -- a rare disease -- when she was only two years old, Bonnie spent most of her childhood living in hospitals -- for months at a time. Doctors had no clue what to do with -- or for -- her.
She was treated by orthopedic specialists who tried setting her limbs in casts.
When that didn't work, they drilled holes in the bones of her tiny knees and ankles, and then strapped her into weird contraptions called tractions, trying to get the muscles and joints of her legs to straighten out.
Three separate times, they broke her thin little wrists when she was a child and reset them, thinking that might help straighten her arm muscles.
When she was six years old, Bonnie's mother, Rose, was instructed by local doctors in Pittsfield that Bonnie needed to be seen by specialists in rheumatoid arthritis at Shriner's Hospital in Springfield, MA, where she might get the appropriate treatment.
Rose chose to ignore the doctors' advice, telling Bonnie it was too much of a bother.
To this day, Bonnie, who is 62 years old, has seen a rheumatologist exactly once, for a consult, about 15 years ago:
"He told me there was nothing he could do to help me with the arthritis. He offered me morphine for the pain. I told him 'No thanks.' If I have pain, I take Tylenol."
What follows is the second chapter in Bonnie Hayden's healing story. Stay tuned, because Bonnie says she has been getting ready to tell this story for most of her challenging life.
When I had the privilege of meeting Bonnie for the first time on August 25, after she had spent a total of four hours on the phone, telling me her story, she said she has "always been told that I should write a book." Indeed, Bonnie seems she's about ready to burst, because she wants so badly for the world to know how she grew up. How she suffered, but also, how she managed to prevail against overwhelming odds. She wants to share her heartbreaking story, so that others will never have to endure the torture that she suffered.
She wants to tell her heartbreaking story, especially now, when people all over the USA and the world, are suffering terrible heartbreak of their own, both personal and political.
Bonnie has an important message for all those who feel discouraged, fearful and at the end of their ropes.
NO MATTER HOW BAD LIFE SEEMS, she says, NEVER EVER GIVE UP HOPE! "Because there are angels out there," she says. "There are angels to help when you are most down and out. When you feel like you have nowhere to turn!"
She knows about angels
*********** I was told I walked early. I don't remember.
I saw a picture of "baby Bonnie" -- ME -- standing in front of our house.
I don't remember. I don't remember when I stopped walking.
I have little flashes of memories, from maybe when I was four years old. Doctors in white coats pulling on my legs, to try to straighten them and casts being put on my legs.
I don't know why the doctors were doing this.
Ma never said. She just stood by and watched.
I don't even remember how many times they tried to straighten my legs and put them in casts.
I do remember the fear I felt every time that I had to go to the doctor's office so they could cut the casts off.
And Ma covering my ears and telling me to stop crying like a baby.
I was no more than four or five years old.
After the casts came off, I was taken to physical therapy in the hospital by wheelchair.
I lived there, in the hospital, for months at a time. I never went to school. What I learned, I learned from tutors.
There, therapists would try to force my legs to bend.
Pushing and pulling. They were always measuring degrees of movement [USING WHAT INSTRUMENT(S) Bonnie?.
I was alone with these people, total stranger, for what felt like hours. Days. Especially to me because I was so very young.
Noone talked to me. Noone laughed or tried to cheer me up. . THEY ALWAYS TALKED ABOUT ME, AS IF I WASN'T THERE. They talked about what to try next. They talked about what decisions they had to make next:
which set of casts they would make into splints that I had to wear every single night.
That was just torture.
Because my joints were collapsing from the RA, I had to sit all day, and my knees would bend and every night Ma would force my legs back into the casts and tape them tight.
Dad would not do it.
He said she was just torturing me, for nothing. He said the doctors and therapists were wasting their time.
Eventually, I learned that Dad was right!
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