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My earliest memory is from when I was about 20 months old.
At the age of 18 months, I contracted spinal meningitis. The doctors told my parents I had a 50% chance of dying, and a 50% of being paralyzed if I survived.
They gave me "an experimental vaccine" via a series of spinal taps. I don't remember any of this, but was told about it later on.
When I was 20 months old, I was able to start walking using one of those old fashion, portable, baby walkers. The kind with a 'lawn chair frame', canvas seat, and it would fold flat to be placed in a car. Any how, I was in this walker, in a house that had a strip of wood on the floor. This strip of wood was some kind of transition in floor covering as one would enter the bathroom from a hallway.
The walker wheels hit that strip of wood, I was pitch forward and hit my face on the bathroom tile floor. The walker snapped shut like a mouse trap, right where they had given me those spinal taps. The pain was intense, and that bathroom imprinted in my memory. It was all white, and very brightly lit. The toilet was on the right, wall-mounted sink on the left.
Things, in general, went down hill from here.
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