I was named Dorothy in honor of my paternal grandmother. I’ve always loved my name and my grandmother, and was proud to be named after her. She was to me a great woman—strong, well-respected, and intelligent—a doctor with a sincere desire to help and heal. As I was her first grandchild, she took great pride in seeing me as made in her image. In fact, people often commented that I was her “spitting image.”
The comparisons of myself with my namesake didn’t stop with the “good” inheritances. I also inherited my grandmother’s vulnerability to asthma as a result of a multitude of allergies. I suffered severe asthma attacks when exposed to hay and grasses of various sorts, pollens, and most animals, including my top three favorites: cats, dogs, and horses. Every time we visited my grandparents’ ranch, which had a variety of things I was allergic to, I would have extreme difficulty breathing, accompanied by wheezing and tightness in my chest. I was afraid to go to sleep at night because I thought I would forget to keep up the effort of struggling for each breath and might die. My grandmother gave me medication to help alleviate the symptoms, but I never felt much relief except that the drugs made me feel drowsy enough to fall asleep despite my fears.
My mom and her older sister were third-generation Christian Scientists. Their grandmother was introduced to Christian Science in the early 1900s by a neighbor. She was subsequently healed of rheumatic fever, and later their mom was healed of scarlet fever. Both my aunt and my mom attended Christian Science Sunday School until graduating when they each turned 20. My aunt continued to practice Christian Science, but when my mom married my dad and started a family, she complied with my dad’s parents’ health-care practices. They were both well-respected pediatricians and were emphatically outspoken in their antagonism toward Christian Science. My mom did not agree with this attitude but thought it prudent to “suffer it to be so now.” Thus my grandparents were given control over my health care, as well as that of my two brothers and sister as they came along.
