Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [17]
With her elopement, having a baby, and getting a job, 1931 and 1932 were momentous years for Genora Johnson. All through this period she suffered from a mild cough, to which she gave little thought or attention. One night at home after supper, however, she and Kermit were having coffee when suddenly and without warning the cough worsened. “I must have coughed up a cup of blood.”30 Trying to control her panic, she telephoned Dr. Stevenson, the pediatrician for whom she worked, and calmly announced that she had coughed up blood. The physician came immediately to her apartment and diagnosed tuberculosis (TB). Genora’s affliction surprised no one in the Albro family. Her father’s brother and sister had both died of tuberculosis, or consumption, as it was generally called at the time. Knowing how contagious the disease was, her relatives gave Genora all kinds of excuses why they could not visit her in the hospital. Genora was skinny and accustomed to being out in all kinds of weather. Perhaps the physical and emotional stresses she had encountered in recent months had aggravated the situation.
Whatever the cause, it was serious. At Hurley Hospital in Flint, physicians found two cavities in her lungs, one “as big as a nickel and another as big as a quarter.” She stayed in the hospital for three months and was treated experimentally with a revolutionary medical technique. Twice a week doctors injected air through the chest cavity to the outside of the offending lung to collapse it, a laborious and painful procedure. With the lung collapsed, they could treat it. This was a frightening experience for Genora because she came close to death on several occasions. The physicians did not know how to determine how much air to pump into a lung; the amount for a man, for example, sometimes differed greatly from that for a woman. According to Sol Dollinger, “Many mistakes were made and the unlucky patients paid for the error with their lives. She [Genora] saw many large men carted out of the hospital ward because of the trial and error method.”31
Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of Genora’s health problems. In 1933, at the age of twenty, a relapse of TB caused her to spend another three months in a medical treatment center, this time at the Ingram County TB Sanatorium. Genora fussed at her mother for writing letters to her using her maiden name: “Now mother, you know I’m married, so why do you keep sending letters to Miss Genora Albro?”32 She recovered somewhat during 1934, particularly after spending three months in the rarefied air of Denver, Colorado.33 Kermit renovated an old car and built a makeshift bed for the trip. Neither Kermit nor Genora found gainful employment, so the State of Colorado—to avoid welfare—paid their expenses back to Michigan. Genora became pregnant with Jarvis (Jody) on this trip. At this stage of her life she knew nothing about birth control, and it would have shocked her friends even to have mentioned the subject. “They thought I was so far ahead in all my political ideas anyway, and racial ideas. . . . [I]t was a part of your private life and you just didn’t talk about it with anybody.”34
Because complications arose when Genora gave birth to her second son in 1935, Lora took care of Jarvis for her. Genora chafed at being absent from her two sons, especially her newborn, writing to Lora that “it seems like I get all the hard part without any of the fun that goes with having a little teeny new baby.” She worried that a “bottle baby never has quite the chance against colds and disease.” Fluid built up in her chest, requiring a thoracentesis for relief. The attending physician, Dr. A. Froelich, was a refugee from Vienna who had fled Hitler’s Austria. He was all business and did not communicate well with other people. Genora needed some kind of diversion from the painful needle insertions into her chest, particularly since the needle sometimes