Carolyn McCurdie
I told myself it wasn’t so bad. After he’d knocked me down, he never kicked me. He never broke bones, never did anything that needed medical attention. In eight years, he forgot discretion only twice. Then I had the black eyes, fat lip, swollen, discoloured face that the world could see. I hid inside, rang in sick, made carefree jokes about walking into cupboard doors.
But mostly he punched my upper arms. Often it had nothing much to do with anything I’d said or done. It was stress relief, when life hadn’t gone the way he thought it should. “Pete never allows for a stubbed toe, does he,” someone remarked when she’d witnessed the beginnings of a tantrum, controlled because people were there. I bought blouses with voluminous sleeves, because at those times my arms were too swollen to fit into ordinary sleeves.
[Read more…] about Free with his fists: trying to make sense of it (Part One)
Bone needs an adequate supply of calcium and phosphate to mineralise properly. Failure of this mineral supply (for any reason) results in defects like osteomalacia (impaired mineralisation of the bone matrix) and osteoporosis (overall low bone mass). In children, inadequate mineralisation causes rickets. There are multiple causes of rickets, but the main one is vitamin D deficiency.
My nine year old self heard the doctor’s stern words and took to heart that he was calling me fat. I was an active child and my family mostly ate nutritious foods. But when we ate, we ate a lot.
