I don't remember much about the occasion myself, but I'm told I had spina bifida, which according to my dictionary (the Oxford Encyclopedic English one) is a congenital defect of the spine, in which part of the spinal cord and its meninges (whatever they are) are exposed through a gap in the backbone. As well as my unusual hue, there was a lump at the bottom of my spine where my spinal fluid had leaked out. The doctor, who had just settled down to watch a documentary on UFO's, rushed to the hospital to save the day.
You know how sometimes you don't hear a noise until it stops? It occurred to me a couple of years ago that the documentary he missed to save my life is sure to have been repeated by now, and it was as though a great weight was lifted from my shoulders. For all these years, it seems I had carried a subconscious guilt for interrupting his evening viewing in those pre-video days.
Which is rather hard on me because he wasn't, by all accounts, a very nice man. The minute I was born I was whisked away and put in an incubator, leaving my parents to fear the worst. They asked the doctor what was wrong with me, but he refused to tell them. However, my dad overheard someone mention spina bifida, and the next day he went to the library to find out everything he could.
One of the more interesting books he read just happened to be written by my doctor, and in it he expressed the view that a child's health is no concern of the parents, and he would never tell a parent if their child's life was in danger. When my father challenged him on this, he came clean and revealed the situation.
There was a ninety percent chance that I would become utterly paralysed, unable to interact with the world. In this eventuality, after a long battle with his conscience, my dad decided that euthanasia was the humane response. He was going to kill me.
As it turned out, I was in the other ten percent. With the help of some talented physicians I made a full recovery, and all I have to show for it today is a couple of stitches on my back where the lump was.
I'm not blue any more, either.
