The Plague and I

“Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can’t even remember where you were going.”

Thus begins Betty MacDonald’s memoir of her year in a sanatorium just outside Seattle battling the “White Plague.” MacDonald uses her offbeat humor to make the most of her time in the TB sanatorium—making all of us laugh in the process.

Betty MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. The Plague and I takes up Betty’s delightful misadventures where The Egg and I left off. She continued chronicling her life story with memoirs Anybody Can Do Anything and finally Onions in the Stew. She lived on Vashon Island in Washington’s Puget Sound.

1. “Oh Captain! My Captain!”

2. I Have a Little Shadow—Who Don’t?

3. “Good-bye, Good-bye to Everything!”

4. All New Patients Must First Be Boiled

5. Oh, Salvadora! Don’t Spit on the Floora

6. Anybody Can Have Tuberculosis

7. Heavy, Heavy Hangs on Our Hands

8. I’m Cold and So Is the Attitude of the Staff

9. Kimi

10. A Smile or a Scar

11. Deck the Halls with Old Crepe Paper! Tra, La, La, La, La, Lala, La, La!

12. Occupational Therapy

13. My Operation

14. Ambulant Hospital

15. Eight Hours Up

16. A Toecover and How It Breeds

17. Privileges

18. “Let Me Out! Let Me Out!”

19. “Whom’s with Who?”