Testimony of Healing April 30, 1910 Issue

When thirteen years of age, I sustained a serious injury...

Minnetta Riggs with contributions from Spillman Riggs

When thirteen years of age, I sustained a serious injury to my left foot, and for nearly three years I was an invalid, undergoing during that period about a dozen operations for the removal of pieces of bone from the foot. When I finally recovered it was only to be assured that the old trouble might break out at any time, as my foot was left in a bad condition. For twenty years I lived in constant dread of a return of the trouble, for there was never a week that I did not suffer more or less pain, and a great deal of the time a tight bandage was worn on the foot to reduce and prevent swelling and inflammation.

Strange as it may seem, I took up pipe-organ playing as my life-work. I studied at Oberlin, O., and in Paris, and so adapted my afflicted foot to the pedal work that even my teachers did not discover the difficulty under which I labored until I told them of it. Early in June, 1907, just as I was making preparations for a series of organ recitals, the thing I had greatly feared came upon me, and I was hurried off to a hospital to have my foot operated upon. The doctors pronounced the trouble tubercular, in its most aggravated form, and after five operations it was finally decided to amputate the diseased member, which was done on June 22. The conditions were apparently against my recovery, for when the doctors and hospital authorities had pronounced the wound healed, and I had gone so far as to have ordered an artificial foot made, the disease again appeared. Again, without warning, I was rushed off to the hospital and a second amputation was performed.

Week after week passed, and that wound refused to heal. The doctor insisted that I would get well in time, but that he could not promise how long I would stay well. He said I must always spend a great deal of time in the open air, sleep with all my windows open, and do various other things to combat the disease. Nearly two months had passed since the second amputation, and the daily dressings were so painful that my nervous system was giving way under the strain. To and to my mental anguish, a black spot appeared near the end of the stump, and the doctor said it might mean another operation and possibly a third amputation. This was our Christmas cheer from materia medica.

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