Look Everyone, I’m Walking by Mary Pettigrew With
legs to take me where I’d go
With eyes to see the sunset’s glow- With ears to hear what I would know O God, forgive me when I whine. I’m blessed indeed. The world is mine! —Dot Aaron Clarence and Mary Pettigrew moved back to their home town of Cobden, Ontario, Canada, in 1954 from Virginiatown in the northern section of the Province. They opened a small restaurant and service station on Highway 17 in the little town of Cobden (population 900) and lived above the business with their three children. In 1962 their little world was shaken when Mary fell victim of a strange malady. Canada in January is a wonderland of glittering ice and sparkling snow. Every inch of the brown earth is covered with a soft blanket of thick whiteness. Fields and roads, streets and yards, all blend into an endless oneness beneath the silent quilt of winter. Muskrat Lake, which stretched the length of the town on the opposite side of the highway to Ottawa, had been frozen over for more than a month. It was spotted with small fishing shacks which had been pulled out on the ice to protect the fishermen from the cold winter air. Cars and skimobiles moved across its frozen surface. It was quite a contrast from the summer months when the green grass sloped gently down to the lapping blue waters and roaring motorboats and spraying water skiers flashed up and down its peaceful surface. In Cobden, as in most Canadian towns, the principal winter sport is curling. The curling arena becomes the center of community activity as the townspeople gather each evening to participate in the sport. The long lanes, looking much like bowling alleys or inside shuffleboard courts, are covered with a thin coating of ice. Men and women take turns scooting heavy, polished stones toward scoring brackets on the other end of the lanes, much like shuffleboard. Others, on the same team, frantically sweep the ice in front of the gliding rocks with little brooms trying to slow them down or speed them up. It was at the curling arena when I first noticed something was wrong. I was in my mid-thirties — healthy, vivacious, and full of fun and life. I had always been able to swing the heavy, forty-pound stones into position and scoot them down the lane without difficulty. But that night I was unable to keep my balance and fell several times on the ice. The next week I was constantly aware of a weakness in my legs. My feet felt as if they were swollen although they looked perfectly normal. I had the sensation at times that they were so big, I could not get them through the doorway, I was waking up in the morning as exhausted as when I went to bed. Clarence insisted that I go to the doctor, but the preliminary examination showed nothing wrong. I was puzzled and confused over the strange and growing symptoms. We had a fire in the restaurant earlier in the year and were doing much of the remodeling ourselves, but my legs did not allow me to be much help. I was having trouble picking up my feet. Even trying to step over a loose board caused me to trip and go sprawling. I had a lot of falls before I was finally forced to admit that something was wrong. It happened in July. The Orange Lodges in the area were all getting together for a big parade, or “Orange Walk,” on July 12. People from all over the area had arrived for the gala weekend and the little restaurant and service station were doing a booming business. It was 2:30 A.M. when we finally got out of the restaurant and started up the stairs to our home above the shop. Clarence had just locked the garage and was coming up behind me. “I just don’t think I can make it,” I gasped about halfway up. “Come on, dear,” he said, giving me a gentle shove from behind. “You are just getting a mite old, that is all.” The next morning I was feeling awful. I was so tired that I could not move out of the bed. Clarence was up dressing to go downstairs and open the station. “Clarence, I am so tired, I can’t move.” “Well, why not sleep in for a while,” he said. I knew I would be needed in the restaurant, so I rolled over to drag myself out of bed. But I could not sit up. My left leg would not move. I stared at it, trying mentally to make it move. But it just lay there like a fence post. I started to cry. “Clarence, I’ve taken a stroke or something. My leg won’t move.” “Mary, you must be kidding,” he said, but I could sense the anxiety in his voice. The leg would not move. It was just there. Clarence phoned Dr. Pye and he said to rush me to the hospital in Pembroke. I was there for three weeks, going through one series of tests after another X-ray, spinal tap, etc. The strange symptoms grew worse. I could stand up, but my left leg simply would not respond. The only way I could walk was by trailing it—taking a step with my right foot and then dragging my left leg behind me. The doctor finally said, “I am going to let you go home, but I am making immediate plans for you to go to Ottawa to see Dr. Embry, a specialist.” We spent that night at home and the next morning Clarence drove me to Ottawa. “A specialist...,” I thought to myself as we drove the scenic road from Cobden to Ottawa, “there must be something seriously wrong.” Dr. Embry gave me a thorough examination and then took me back to his office. “Are you alone?” he asked as he sat down behind his desk. “No, my husband is in the waiting room,” I said. “Better bring him in here,” he said, leafing through my file. I got scared. “What is he going to tell me,” I asked myself, quivering with fear. I went to the door and motioned for Clarence. He came in and stood behind my chair. The doctor looked up at me, “Did your doctor not give you any idea about your condition?” “No,” I said, feeling chill bumps run up and down my arms and neck, “he just told me what to do.” He shifted his gaze to Clarence. “Did he not talk to you?” I looked up at Clarence. He looked at me and then shifted his gaze to the floor. “Yes,” he admitted. “Did he say it was multiple sclerosis?” There was a long period of silence and then I heard Clarence’s weak voice reply, “Yes.” If he had picked up a rock and hit me on the head it would not have hurt so much. I began to cry (which I thought I would never do in front of a doctor), but Dr. Embry just reached in his drawer and handed me a box of tissue. “Go ahead and cry. There would be something wrong with you if you did not.” We sat and talked for a long time afterward. He told me what to expect. The condition would never be any better. It would get progressively worse. So far, they had no cure for it. I could expect to become a cripple. It could be years—or just months. “I am just laying it on the line, Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said. “It is your life that is involved and I would be derelict in my duty if I did not tell you the whole truth. But unless research comes up with a cure, this is the life you will have to adjust yourself to from now on.” I was not very good company on the way home from Ottawa that afternoon. We had three children: Barry was fourteen, Ona was fifteen, and Murray was sixteen. “I do not want to tell the children,” I told Clarence. “You will have to tell them something,” he said. “And we cannot lie to them. They are going to find out sooner or later. We might as well tell them the truth.” We did. Their questions were normal teen-age questions. “How long will it be before you are better?” “I do not know and neither does the doctor,” I said. I was grateful they did not seem too disturbed. I dragged my leg around all summer—up and down the long flight of stairs from our living room to the restaurant below. By the time the leaves started to change, I was facing the fact I would probably be like this the rest of my life. Autumn had always been my favorite season—the bright sunshine beaming through the nippy air, the hillsides ablaze with reds, golds, greens, and browns. But this fall everything seemed dull—drab. Then I had my second attack. It happened at the funeral service for my uncle in the little United Church in Forester’s Falls. Clarence was a pallbearer and the boys were carrying flowers. Ona and I had taken our seats in the church, but the moment I sat down, I knew something was happening to me. I was losing the power in my whole body. I sensed that my muscles were going completely out of control, although I still had all my mental faculties. It was the oddest feeling, as though I were standing outside myself looking on, powerless to control what my muscles were doing. I began to shake — not just shiver, but shake. My head was jerking violently back and forth, then sideways. I was afraid my neck would snap. My whole body was bouncing up and down on the pew. Ona was terrified. She had never seen anyone in such shape — nor had I. I kept thinking, what on earth am I going to do? This is like a bad dream. Then I became aware that Ona was holding onto me — trying to hold me still. But the shaking seemed to get more violent; it seemed that everyone in the church was staring at me, but I was utterly helpless to do anything about it. Ona was tugging on me, trying to get up so she could get me outside. “I cannot move. I cannot stand up,” I said through chattering teeth. She sat back down and put her arms around my body trying to hold me still until the funeral was over. As the people began to file out, my brother passed by and glanced down where I was sitting. He immediately realized what was happening to me and reached over and pulled me to my feet. Although it was impossible for me to walk, he just put his big arms around my waist and helped me to the door where he simply picked me up in his arms and carried me down the steps. Clarence was helping the boys with the flowers and looked up at us from the street. He had both arms loaded with flowers and could only give me a helpless, frantic look. The boys, Barry and Murray, were much less inhibited by proper procedure and throwing their flowers on the hoods of several parked cars, they dashed to where I was. They opened the back door of our car and gently placed me on the seat. “Just leave me alone and go on to the cemetery,” I said. But they took me straight on to my aunt’s house in Forester’s Falls and after the burial Clarence came and took me home. Dr. Pye gave me pills to try to make the shaking subside. The boys sat on my lap to try to hold me down. Nothing worked. That night I could not sleep for shaking. It took two days for it to subside. When it did, I had lost all sensation from my waist down and was unable to stand or walk. Dr. Pye tried to get me in the Ottawa hospital. They had a new serum that might help, he said. The hospital was filled and it would be after the first of the year before they could admit me. In the meantime, Dr. Pye was in and out almost every day — constantly checking on my condition. No doctor could have shown more compassion. Then late one Saturday night, the first week in January of 1963, I was sitting in the living room over the restaurant looking through the moisture-streaked window at the ice-covered lake across the highway. There was a heavy snow falling, and the lights from Clarence’s station below cast an eerie glow in front of the restaurant. I could see him, wading through the snow, getting ready to close up for the night. On the highway, a few slow-moving cars felt their way down the road, their headlights punching feeble holes in the swirling whiteness. I noticed one westbound car slowly creeping into the station, its windshield wipers vainly trying to clear the glass of the sticky, blowing snow. A dark figure got out and labored through the deep drifts toward the station door, overcoat buttoned high against his face and hat pulled over his eyes. Moments later, I heard a stomping on the steps and a knock at the door. It was Dr. Pye. He pulled up a small stool and sat down in front of me. He had just driven in from Ottawa. There was still no word on when I could get in the hospital, but he had brought home some of the new serum. He had never administered any of it, but if I was willing to try, he could have me at the hospital in Pembroke the next morning and would give it to me himself. Clarence had come up and was standing beside the door that led into the bedroom. I looked up at him. “What should I do?” Dr. Pye looked at me and said, “Do not ask Clarence. This is something you must decide for yourself.” “Why?” I asked. “Because from what we have found out about this new serum,” he said seriously, “it could go one of two ways. Either it will make you better or you will get worse.” Worse? What if I did get worse? What if I had to go through another one of those horrible shaking spells? “What would you do if you were in my shoes?” I asked Dr. Pye. “I am not telling you what to do,” he said, “but as far as I can see, you have nothing to lose.” At eight o’clock the next morning, Clarence bundled me up in my warmest clothes and carried me down the stairs to the car. It had stopped snowing and the early morning sun was peeking between the gray dawn clouds and reflecting off the glistening icicles that hung from the branches of the snow-ladened trees alongside the road. Early on Monday morning they began the treatment. The process consisted of draining the fluid off my spine and replacing it with the special serum. It had to be administered without an anesthetic. “You will just have to tough it out, Mary,” he said, “and let me know if I get too close to a nerve.” It was extremely painful, but I tried to work with him day after day. Each day he would test the reflexes in the lower half of my body to see if any of the sensation had returned. Nothing. “I am hoping when the feeling returns, you will be able to walk,” he said. I could sense he was genuinely worried about the effects of the treatments. All this time, I kept asking myself, “Am I going to be able to walk or will I get worse?” One night, about two months after the treatments began, I felt the prick of a hypo needle. I knew I was getting better. It was not long before I could feel the sheets on the bed. My sense of feeling was gradually returning. Although it never did return in my toes, I still felt like a whole person again. If the sense of feeling has returned in my legs, then I ought to be able to walk, I thought. I began asking the doctor when he was going to let me try my legs. It had been two and a half months since that early Sunday morning we had driven to Pembroke. Clarence had visited almost every day and Ona and the boys had been coming faithfully. I had been building up their hopes that I was soon going to be able to walk again. They, too, were waiting for the big day. Finally, the time arrived when Dr. Pye told me I could test my legs. He helped me out of bed and I reached down and put my toes on the floor. “Now Mary, you will not feel your toes, but the rest of you is sound and whole and you should be able to make it,” the doctor said. Gradually I straightened up—and then collapsed forward into his arms. I could not hold myself up. The muscles refused to stiffen and respond. There was nothing. I tried once more before they helped me back into bed. It was a disappointing, depressing shock. That afternoon the nurse came through the door with what might as well have been my casket. It was a wheelchair. I tried to keep it from my family. When visiting hours arrived. I had the nurses hide the wheelchair so they would not know I could not walk. But Ona seemed to sense something was wrong. Then she suddenly quit coming to see me. One night, Barry came by himself and I asked him why Ona had not been over during the past week. In his innocent way he said, “It is all on account of you, Mom. Every since that night Dr. Pye came by the place and told Daddy you would never walk again, she has been like this. It is her nerves, I guess.” “Never walk again? You mean he said I would never walk again? And you have known all along that I have been in a wheelchair and have not said anything about it?” The shock of hearing the verdict was more than I could stand and I began to cry. Barry was embarrassed and hurt, but I was thankful it was all out just the same. The next morning I asked Dr. Pye about it. He hung his head. “That’s right, Mary. I did tell them. I did it to help Ona face reality. I am not saying you will never walk again. It is going to be a long time and the chances are mighty slim you will ever be back on your feet. But you can go home and we will get you a wheelchair.” Dr. Pye continued, “Now we are going to have to work together on Ona. You have been hiding your real condition from her. She cannot accept the fact you are an invalid because you will not face her with it. You have to smarten up, girl, and help her understand what lies ahead.” But I could not stand the thought of my daughter seeing me in a wheelchair. “I will try, doctor,” I said, “but I just do not think I can do it.” Dr. Pye knew my problem and behind my back arranged to put me in a position where I would be forced to help Ona face reality. That night, one of the nurses came for me and wheeled me down to another patient’s room to watch television. As visiting hours approached, however, I became more and more restless and finally buzzed for the nurse to come take me back to my room. “I have to get out of this wheelchair before my family arrives,” I said. She wheeled me out into the hall and then excused herself to run an errand. “Don’t leave me here,” I shouted after her. But she just walked off and left me. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. I recognized Clarence’s heavy steps and the delicate clickety-click of Ona’s heels on the hard floor. “What am I going to do?” I moaned. “Maybe they won’t recognize me.” I hung my head and hoped they would just walk on past. Then I felt Ona’s hand on my shoulder and heard her quivering voice. “Mum, what are you doing out here? Why did they leave you alone in the hall?” Before I knew it she was pushing me down the corridor to my room. The nurse came in and said, “Now you just sit there in your wheelchair and talk to your daughter. You have not sat up in a long time.” She left me with Ona sitting across the room staring at me in the wheelchair. It was a very silent visiting hour. We were all scared to talk for fear we would cry, so we just sat there looking at each other. When she left, she bent over and kissed me. “It is not so bad, Mum. When you get home, I can wheel you around.” A week later, I was home—in the wheelchair. The boys came to my rescue and carried me up the stairs. And it was not long before I learned I could live an almost normal life from the wheelchair. I could do the mending. I could dry dishes. I could peel the potatoes and vegetables for the restaurant. I could clean the silverware and fold the napkins. I even got so I could run the vacuum cleaner. I was just as busy as everyone else. At first, the boys carried me up and down from the restaurant, but I soon learned that I could sit on a piece of cardboard and slide down the steps. By holding onto the handrail I could drag my useless legs behind me and moving from one step to the other finally get to the top. I was in the wheelchair until the middle of the summer. Then one day Clarence brought home a walker—a contraption designed to fit around me from three sides so I could lean on it and push it in front of me from a standing position. I found that by using my shoulder muscles I could pick up my legs. It was very awkward, walking with my shoulders. By hunching my left shoulder high in the air, I could bring my left foot up just high enough to make it swing forward. Then I would repeat the action with my right leg. By heaving my body into the air, I could make slow progress with the aid of the walker. That fall I was finally able to stand alone. I could not make my legs go forward without the walker, but I could go backward. My boys would get on the floor and take turns holding the walker while the other one picked up my feet and moved them forward, trying to teach my feet to walk all over again using a different set of muscles. Every night I would go to bed praying for God to help me. Then one morning I got up and automatically my foot went forward when I slipped out of bed. I screamed downstairs and my family came running up. “Look everyone, my foot went forward,” I shouted. But when I tried to make it go forward again, it would not. What did I do to make it go forward the first time? Clarence and the three children were all standing around waiting anxiously. Finally, I was able to reconstruct the process in my mind and very slowly and deliberately I moved my foot again—forward. It was a happy day. I still could not lift my toes. I could get my heels off the ground by jerking my shoulders into the air, but my toes would still drag as I walked. And, of course, I would stumble on the slightest bump or mound. By the end of the year, I was getting around pretty well on crutches or a cane—however, I was quite a sight to behold as I propelled myself forward. During the next three years, I learned something else: the doctor was right with his first prognosis. I would get progressively worse. I would go for several months and make seeming progress, and then have another hard attack. Each attack was always a little more severe than the last and left me a little worse. Each time, it seemed, I would have to learn how to walk again when I got out of the hospital. I got so I dreaded seeing the sun come up on a new day for fear it would be the day of another attack. The muscle spasms in my back were the worst. They began in the big muscles along the spinal column and moments later I would be completely out of control. I thought the shaking spasms were bad, but in comparison they were nothing. As the muscles contracted they drew my shoulder blades back until they almost touched. This threw my arms up and out and then my head was drawn backward toward my spine. I could not breathe. I had to gasp and cry out for each breath and sometimes I would even pass out from lack of oxygen. My legs were drawn backward and my heels pulled up toward the center of my spine until I was almost turned inside out. It was after one of these horrible attacks that I was back in the hospital at Pembroke. I had lost all use of my backbone. The doctor said, “I am going to send you to St. Vincent’s in Ottawa.” “Oh, no, you are not,” I shot back at him from my prone position in bed. “That is for cripples who will never be anything but cripples and you are not going to put me there.” I could tell Dr. Pye was disgusted with me. “Mary, maybe they can get you to walking there. They have all the proper equipment.” “I will go home and stay until my family is tired of me and then I will go to St. Vincent’s. But I am not going yet.” “But you cannot even go home now,” he argued. “You cannot even stand up. Now just what do you think it would take to get you to walking again?” I felt definitely that if he could find some means to support my spine, I could make my legs work. So I said in jest, “If you nailed a board to the back of my head and the other end to my bottomside I would be able to walk.” Dr. Pye gave me a strange look and turned and left the room. Thirty minutes later two nurses appeared with a stretcher. “Oh, no,” I thought, “he is really going to nail a board to me.” When I arrived in the surgical room, I found he was preparing a cast. It took them four tries and on the fourth they had to suspend me from a hoist and build the cast around me — but they finally got it done. And when they lowered me to the floor, I could stand and walk. The months dragged by and they finally took the cast off and replaced it with shoes with iron leg braces. Sometimes I would have to wear a neck brace, too. Dr. Pye thought we should close the restaurant. I knew he was right. It was far more than I could handle in the wheelchair. The hours were too long and the work too strenuous. So we closed the restaurant and I opened a small dress shop instead. I had to have something to do to occupy my time. The spasms were coming more often and I was being carried to the hospital almost every third month to stay from two to three weeks. I had trouble with my throat and sometimes lost all sense of taste. Dr. Pye recommended physical therapy to try to improve my coordination. I was making regular visits to the physiotherapist in Cobden who helped with the exercise and treatments. Murray was getting married in October, 1967. Of course, the entire family was involved in the wedding and they all insisted that I attend. I remembered that horrible incident at my uncle’s funeral and told them I would just stay home and wish them Godspeed from there. They finally persuaded me to attend. Barry was the best man. Ona was a bridesmaid. I made them promise they would not look at me after the service started. “Please, please promise me you will not look and if anything happens, just go on as if I were not even there.” They all agreed. When the wedding got underway and the group was all gathered at the front of the church, the shaking started. I was sitting with Clarence and next to my father on the second pew. The shaking was so bad I thought the pew would come unscrewed from the floor. The whole group of them turned around and looked at me and Helen, the bride, just shook her head. I was so embarrassed, I could have cried. After the wedding, I spent three more weeks in the hospital. I was getting pretty discouraged. “I cannot go on like this,” I thought afterward. “Something has to happen.” That something was just around the comer. It came in a visit from an older farm couple from Forester’s Falls — the Kenneth Mays. The Mays lived across the road from my brother and his wife. Mrs. May had told them of her husband’s miraculous healing of terminal cancer of the lymph glands. My brother had told her about me and asked if they would come see me. They did. They made several visits, sharing their experiences from the Kathryn Kuhlman services in Pittsburgh. “You will find out, just as I did, that God has the power to heal,” he said. I thought about it a lot, but could not make up my mind. It was all so strange — so different. We were all active in our little church, but I had just never considered such a thing as divine healing. In June, 1968, we were invited to another wedding. “No!” I said steadfastly. “I have broken up my last public service.” It was a favorite niece up in Kirland Lake, about 350 miles north of Pembroke. The family was all going and I finally agreed to go with them, but I was determined that I was going to sit in the car. Dr. Pye had given me some quick-acting pills that he said I could take if I felt the shakes coming on. The family encouraged me and I finally consented to go inside. Once inside the church, we were separated. Murray and his wife were seated down near the front and she had the pills in her purse. Clarence and I were seated in the middle of a pew and Barry was several rows behind us. I had no sooner been seated than I felt my body begin to tremble. “Clarence,” I whispered, “I am getting the shakes. Get me out of here.” It was too late. It was one of the worst spells I had had. Barry saw what was happening and got up and pushed his way over the people sitting around him and then trampled all over the people in our row as he wedged himself between me and the lady sitting beside me. Clarence was on the other side and the two of them tried to hold me still. It was horribly embarrassing, especially since I was in a strange place and the people did not understand my problem. Murray and his wife turned round and she suddenly realized she had the pills in her purse. She gave them to Murray and he got up right in the middle of the wedding and walked back down the aisle to bring me the pills. My heels were rattling against the wooden floor and causing an abominable noise. Clarence and Barry put their feet under mine and held me tightly. The pills began to take effect and made me drowsy, but the shaking continued. When the service was over, they picked me up by my elbows and carried me out. My legs were flopping in all directions and my head was jerking back and forth. Murray joined us at the door and they put me in the car and drove me to the hotel. While I was sitting in church, I made up my mind that as soon as I got back to Cobden, I was going to make arrangements to go to Pittsburgh. Anything, just anything, was better than having to go through this again. I called Mr. May as soon as I got back. He was thrilled over my decision and offered to take me. But Clarence said, “No, it is my job to see about your health. If that is what you want to do, then I will lock the garage and take you myself.” We were scheduled to leave on Wednesday at noon. “It seems a shame to drive all that way down by ourselves,” I said to Clarence. “I have heard some of the other ladies say they wanted to go if anyone was going. Do you think we could make room?” So we wound up taking Mrs. Ross, Mrs. Smith, and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Pearlie, who had a spinal curvature. We arrived on Thursday and, since we were all short of funds, decided to all crowd into one motel room. When we went to bed that night, we were all the model of modesty. First one of us would go in the bathroom and change into our bedclothes and then while the rest all turned their backs, we would dash for the bed and pull the covers up under our chins. But during the night, we forgot all about our modesty. We forgot it because I almost died of a back muscle spasm. My body was convulsing so badly Clarence could not handle me. Everyone was flying around the room putting cold towels on my back and trying to straighten out my arms and legs and hold my head in position so I would not suffocate. It was not until it was all over that they remembered how careful they had been to keep from exposing themselves to each other earlier in the evening! The next morning, July 12, was the day of the miracle service. As we left for Carnegie Hall I remembered it had been on July 12, six years before, that I had not been able to get out of bed for the first time. I found myself praying, asking God to do the miraculous and heal my body. Mr. May had warned us to go in the side door. Clarence had intended to bring a folding chair so I could sit before the service began, but he forgot it and had to run down to a store and buy one after we got to the auditorium. When the doors opened, I was shaking so badly that I could not get up. An usher helped Clarence carry me inside and they placed my folding chair on the back row. Clarence took a seat directly in front of me. Suddenly the service started. Miss Kuhlman appeared on the stage and all the people rose to their feet in song. I finally managed to stand, holding tightly onto the seat in front of me. Clarence turned and looked at me and begged me to sit down. But I could not. My body was so stiff it was impossible for me to sit back down. I felt like my hands were nailed to the seat in front of me. “Please, Mary, sit down,” Clarence whispered. But all I could do was stand as if glued to the spot — shaking. Suddenly, I felt a strange, electric-like tingling running through my body. It was a sensation not unlike others I had had before going into a spasm. “Clarence,” I whispered. He sensed the anxiety in my voice and left his seat and came back and stood beside me. “Get me out of here quickly; I am about to have another back spasm.” Having just gone through one the night before, Clarence knew what could happen and he motioned to a nearby worker. They led me out into the lobby which was filled with people. I reached the middle of the lobby when I passed out. During the last three years, I had been having vivid dreams at night. I dreamed I was normal: walking, dancing, washing walls, making up beds, doing all the things I loved to do in life. I had so many of these dreams and they were so real to me that they made me depressed. When I awoke in the morning, I would lie in bed and cry because they seemed so real and I dreaded having to face another day. Lying there on the floor of the lobby at Carnegie Hall, I had another such dream. As I regained consciousness, I felt myself trying to hold back. “No,” I said to myself. “I do not want to go back to that world of pain and deformity. I want to remain here in dreamland where I am well and happy.” But consciousness slowly returned and I opened my eyes. There was a strange face in front of me. I did not recognize it. It was a crying face. I had only seen Clarence cry once in all my life. But it was Clarence and he was crying. Then it all came back to me. I closed my eyes and thought, I have to get up. When I opened them again, Clarence was smiling. He extended a hand to me and I came right up off the floor like I was a high school cheerleader. I do not know who said it first, whether I said, “Clarence, I have been healed,” or whether he said, “Mary, you have been healed.” It makes no difference, for we were in each other’s arms. This time we both cried. Through my tears I said, “Clarence, I can feel my toes. I can feel them against the floor. I have ten toes and I can feel all of them.” It had been five years since I had felt my toes against the floor. I began to walk — normally. I could pick up my feet. I later realized I was talking loud, almost shouting. No telling how many people were disturbed in that meeting by all the commotion I was making back in the lobby. They walked me out on the side porch and suggested I walk down the steps. They were concrete. I stood looking down those five steps toward the sidewalk which seemed to be hundreds of feet below. You cannot do that, I thought. You will fall and break your neck. But my feet kept right on going and I went down and up. “Oh, Clarence, I wish the children were here. I wish they could see me now.” I felt like shouting, “look everyone, I’m walking!” The three other women met me at the door. We stood there in the doorway laughing and crying and hugging each other. Then I was called to the stage and Miss Kuhlman insisted Clarence come up also. Suddenly both of us were under the power of God. “Oh, I wish the children could see me now,” I kept saying. We spent that night in Pittsburgh. For six years I had wanted to go shopping, but it had been impossible. This was my first trip to the States and I held Clarence to his promise that if I were healed, he would let me shop to my heart’s content. That evening he took me to the biggest shopping center I had ever seen. “Buy anything you want,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. I walked and walked and walked some more. The shelves were piled high with wonderful things, but I did not see a thing I wanted. It seemed I had everything I could ever need. All I bought was a pair of sandals. For years I had had to wear those big, rough oxfords with the braces and now I wanted to be able to see my new toes. We phoned the children from the motel room. They were all waiting for us when we pulled up the next evening in front of the station. “Hurry, get out. Let’s see you,” they shouted through the car window. They followed me up the stairs watching my feet and legs as they gracefully moved from one step to another. There was no trace of the disease left. We sat up most of the night trying to answer the hundreds of questions they were firing at us. There were no answers to some of the questions. Dr. Pye just shook his head although he was very happy for me. My therapist said it was medically impossible. But it happened. I cannot tell you how it happened or why it happened, but one thing I know — God did it!” Afterword |