A Very Brave Woman

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 4

A Very Brave Woman

Not ■ Leg to Stand On. By Gloria Gavan. Whitcomb* and Tomb*. 176 pp. Illustrated. There .can be few families more unfortunate than Gloria Gayan's. She herself ha* lost

both her legs, her twin sister is blind and partly deaf and so too is her elder sister. But this is no self-pitying chronicle of despair. Miss Gavan’s well-written account of her life, while not minimising or artificially glossing over her difficulties, shows tremendous determine-

tlon and a will not only to live, but to work and lead as normal a life as possible. As a 10-year-old child Gloria fell off a maypole swing and bruised her hip. The pain persisted and finally tuberculosis was diagnosed. After a long spell in hospital she returned to school with one leg shorter than the other. This was a disability which many people would have felt was sufficient to cope with, but for Gloria it was just the beginning. She has spent 14 of her 43 years in hospital with Bazin’s disease, tuberculosis of the lungs, diphtheria, a hysterectomy, and bladder infections. Finally both her legs were amputated. However, her object in writing this book (at the prompting of her doctor, among others) is by no means to make a public catalogue of her misfortunes. Rather is it to help other amputees or persons with long-term illnesses to realise what can be achieved by determination and faith In God. But let no one imagine that Miss Gavan is an insensitive person who won these battles without difficulty. For years she worried over a friends thoughtless comment that she was neurotic and really had nothing wrong with her—she had her times of deep depression like any other patient

Although her sisters have spent all their lives since early childhood at the Foundation for the Blind in Auckland, coming home to Christchurch only for the Christmas holidays, the family has kept remarkably close, due in large measure to the fact that Gloria’s mother took great pains to learn to write Braille so that her daughters could receive news of the family by letter every week. The result of this closeness now is that Gloria and her blind sisters complement one another’s difficulties. They feel themselves fortunate in being spared the other's disability. Gloria now lives with an aunt (her mother died of cancer and her father after a stroke several years ago) and is now secretary to the Medical Superintendent of Coronation Hospital, Dr. Enticott. In a brief Foreword Dr. Enticott and Mr Greenslade make this comment: Tffe have never treated a patient who has been so badly and so permanently disabled, and who has been able to preserve so valiantly her determination to get well.” Not unnaturally doctors seldom make such statements—that they have ehoeen to do so publicly is a great and welldeserved tribute to a very brave woman.