LFC

The first letters of the alphabet I ever learned were L, F and C!  I was about two and had no idea what they meant and really didn't yet have pencil control, but nonetheless dad wrote the letters down and made me copy them over and over again until I could do them properly, and then I had to write them, when instructed, onto little white cards. And I had to do it for the next five years. Five whole years!

LFC, LFC, LFC, LFC.

How I longed to do nice rows of "e".

It was in the early 60s. As you know, dad was brought to Fiji in the early 50s to handle the Tuberculosis Epidemic that hit the Pacific after World War II. It was back then a disease new to the region, so no one had any immunity and thus ... ten years of rampant TB, rampant death, rampant horror!

But, by the early 60s, dad had got the epidemic under control however he had such a hate-love relationship with the disease, he was determined to run it to ground and stomp it out of the British Pacific altogether, and to that end procured a ship - our darling Vuniwai - Fijian for 'doctor' - that he had turned into a floating hospital and he also got funding (I think the wonderful and mighty Queen Elizabeth II, who was his stalwart support throughout these horrible times, was personally responsible for getting him everything he wanted) so every single person in Fiji got a chest X-ray, and Vuniwai sailed the seas, around all the islands, gathering these for him.

But instead of being delivered to Tamavua TB Hospital - the now World Heritage Listed hospital on the ridge above Suva - these X-rays were delivered to our home in the hospital compound, coming in by the thousands in large official-looking cartons every time Vuniwai returned to Suva. And despite having a "nice people eat in the dining room" sort of mother, these cartons were stacked up in our dining room, putting that room out of commission. That must have been a nightmare for mum, but she never said anything!

The X-rays themselves came in miniature, each about four inches by three inches, in large ominous-looking black rolls of thousands, and the light-box enlarger sat on our dining-room table and for hours on end, dad looked through them, each in turn, looking for signs of the disease he hated so very much that he was determined to wipe off the face of the earth - or at least the part of the earth he was responsible for.

However, can you see the problem? Back then the population of Fiji was just under a million ... which meant that over the course of five years, we had just under a million of these sodding X-rays in our lives, sitting in our house, taking over our entire existence (Baby Jane's earliest memories involve sitting on dad's lap at the light box as he explained to her how to read a chest X-ray! Mine too!) because our father alone looked at every single one. Yup, he was so mistrustful of anyone else doing a proper job, he examined every single X-ray personally.

And at least one of us, little more than toddlers, would be kneeling on a chair next to him (being too small to see properly if we sat) at all times, turning over those sodding little white cards every time he said "Next"!  And, despite none of us yet being able to read, it was our job to tell him if there was any handwriting on the card. And if there was, we'd shout "Writing!" and dad would take the card and check the name and number was correct, read what was there - usually something about how a family member had died of TB - and then he'd examine that X-ray and most usually we'd then have to write those dreaded letters "LFC"!

Lung Fields Clear!!!!

Sometimes however it got more involved and, after "Writing!", dad would cut the X-ray out of the roll, staple it to the card and it would be put into the special box of cards that named those people Vuniwai had to sail out to collect to bring back to the hospital so dad could get his hands on them.

Thus, that was our earliest childhood: day and night, dad looking at these sodding X-rays, working from home for some unfathomable reason - maybe mum was insisting he spent more time with his children - and involving us in the process, trying to make it into a game that we could all play together.  Don't know why. Surely it counts as "cruel and unusual punishment".

And I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this, but the best part of this game - the part I truly loved - was that, when we were all still little more than toddlers, dad taught all of us how to read a chest X-ray, and then he'd go off and read the newspaper while we kiddies did a roll or two. I must add that this wasn't entirely irresponsible because he was always sitting nearby, and since he knew that we all knew exactly what 'normal' lungs looked like, the rule was that any that didn't look normal we'd give him a yell and he'd come over to look ...

... but there was that spectacular time when we kiddies discovered a man who had all his organs on the opposite side of his body.  Oh wow!  It was so unbearably cool!  We all got so excited (we kids loved all the freaky objects like two headed chickens they had at the Medical School next door) and yelled for dad to come look. At first dad dismissed it, saying that the radiologist must have screwed up and put the image the wrong way round, but nonetheless - screw-up or freak - that X-ray was cut out and put into the box because either his radiologist was in trouble or else this freakish man was definitely someone dad wanted to get his hands on.  (As it turned out, he did indeed have his organs all round the opposite way, and the phrase "one in a million" really hit home for me.)

Anyway, all this came back to me yesterday when I got the results of my chest X-ray and was able to write to my siblings those fabulous letters of the alphabet ... LFC!!!!!