When I was in the second grade I came down with rheumatic fever. It was 1958, I was seven years old, and I remember my mother picking me up at school and driving directly to our doctor’s office. After a lot of poking, prodding, and blood drawing I was wheeled upstairs to the children's ward, with nine or ten beds occupied, and I was told to lay down in one of them. A nurse wheeled in a cart (the diaper cart) and they started undressing me. No screen or privacy and all the other kids and parents in the ward watching. No one ever told me I was sick, they just kept saying be quite the doctor will be there soon with my mother.
The next thing I knew I was naked and one of the nurses was putting a diaper under my butt and pinning it on. I remember crying and begging them not to do it, even though I had wanted to wear diapers for as far back as I could recall but this was different, they all just acted like I wasn't really there while they adjusted the fold of the diaper to fit me. I remember knowing that only babies wore diapers and I wasn't a baby so I must have done something bad. They finished by putting me in some plastic or rubber pants and hospital pajamas that snapped the top and bottoms together around my waist. That was the routine for me and the rest of the kids in the ward for the remainder of my stay.
My aunts, uncles, and mother were there a lot during the next few weeks. I became resigned but always very embarrassed about the diapers and constant diapering, but I stopped complaining because my mother told me that I had to. Years later my mother swore that everything had been explained to me at the hospital, but my recollection was always that of being punished for doing something terribly wrong. I don't remember ever feeling sick, I don't remember my mother or the doctors or the nurses ever explaining what was wrong with me or why I had to wear a diaper all the time. I only remember the diapering, lots of shots, enemas, and everyone constantly asking if I was wet or if I had pooped yet.
If I could go back and do it again I'm sure I would enjoy it a lot more. But then again, knowing now how sick I must have really been and how many kids used to die of rheumatic fever in the 1950s, maybe it's a good thing that I was just an oblivious little kid who didn't want everyone to know that I had to wear diapers again.