Flaming Chicken Livers!
For the time frame, we had been members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly a year at this point. We generally invited the proselyting missionaries over for dinner once a week. Bob had graduated high school and was renting an apartment. He was working and could afford to be on his own. He actually invited Barbara and I to come over for dinner once. It was very kind of him.
Mom was frying up some chicken livers in a small frying pan. She must have been distracted with something and the light must have been up a little too high on the gas stove, but somehow the pan caught fire.
When she discovered it, she hurried to get the pan out the
back door so it wouldn’t burn the whole house up. And then the wind gust
changed her plans for the day! She always wore a Mumu (that she had made) that
came just below her knees. On her way out the back door a wind gust blew the flaming
pan and contents back at her. The fronts of her shins and the tops of her feet
were burned with 2nd and 1st degree burns.
Dad tried to treat them as best he knew how and having taken a first aid course at the Red Cross, he was confident he knew what to do. She was in a lot of pain. He had put wet towels on her legs. That’s temporary relief.
Eventually dad was at work, so mom called either Pat Palm or Elaine Hansen, maybe she called both of them trying to figure out what to do but knowing she needed help that dad either could not or would not give. One of them came, saw and got her to the emergency room. The doctors admitted her to the hospital and started her on shots in the abdomen to dissolve blood clots.
Sister Elaine Hansen called one day when I was home from school and taught me something I was clueless and not smart about at all. When you’re in the hospital, it’s boring and depressing and you need visitors and if your dad won’t take you to the hospital to visit her you need to call the hospital. The phone number is in the phone book, call it and ask to speak to a patient, Dorothy Nelson. They will be able to look up her room number and her extension number.
I did call and was talking to her on the phone. Then dad came home. Who are you talking to? Is that your mother? Give me that phone! He said some derogatory things and then hung up. I’m not sure that made her feel much better.
The Hansen’s had Barbara come stay with them and I stayed at another member’s home for a couple nights. Sister Hansen took us over to the hospital so we could visit with mom. We eventually returned home, when mom did. Things felt uneasy for a while. In fact, it was never quite the same ever after.
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