In the fall, early in the 1960’s, Patrick Flanagan was born as the youngest of three children to a lower-middle-class family in central Florida. Patrick, at birth, had a deficiency of Gamma Globulin. This autoimmune disease is a lack of immunoglobulins, or antibodies. Patrick was susceptible to numerous infections that could all fatally infect infants. At less than a year old, Patrick developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalized and placed inside an oxygen-breathing tent, like “The boy in The Plastic Bubble.” After he recovered from that dangerous, life-threatening episode, his doctor started administering gamma globulin boosters. This is injected into the muscles to slow the distribution of the drug. The shot was through a very large-caliber needle, as the medicine had high viscosity and was administered in the butt cheek, making it a very painful injection. That made the drive home difficult, as the pain from the injection site was severe for hours. They didn’t have car seats back then, and riding the back seat with one cheek in the air was the only way Patrick could not aggravate and increase the pain. He got through the term of having to get weekly injections; Patrick couldn’t remember the length of the treatments, as his age and remembering a not-so-wonderful experience are understood.
At age two, his family relocated from Central Florida to the Los Angeles area. Life in the early 60s was hugely different from the world we live in now. Children were given much more self-responsibility than they are today. Children were told to go out and play, stay on the block, and be home before the streetlights came on. Patrick remembers running the neighborhood alone and with other children, often visiting neighbors and playing in the street with parents nowhere to be seen. Kids were raised with the adage, ” If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.” At three years old, Patrick made a campfire in the backyard under the orange tree. His mother came out of the house and put it out, leaving him with, ” Wait until your father gets home.” Time stood still, and hours felt like days. Finally his father finally returned home from work, and immediately his mother ratted him out. His father went out the back door and returned a few moments later. He said to Patrick’s mom, “he knew enough to put rocks around the firepit to contain the blaze.” He went into the bedroom to get out of his work clothes, and there was no further conversation or punishment from it. Just don’t do it again.
Later that year, when Patrick was still three years old, he had climbed the orange tree where his father had built a tree house for his older brother. Patrick’s brother was six years older at the time, and it was time he had a tree house in his father’s eyes. A few days passed, and not wanting to be left behind, Patrick climbed the tree to the tree house. He ended up falling from the treehouse and fracturing his skull. Apparently, there was a wooden board on the ground that his head struck. Patrick was rushed to the hospital to find out the extent of the injuries. He actually remembered having his father pull over to vomit at the side of the road on the way to the hospital. A symptom of a head injury. The injury had repercussions in the years to come.
When Patrick turned four years old, his family relocated to just North of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After the move, Patrick started having night terrors during his sleep. His mind was on tilt, with scary clowns and swirling colors. He also had issues with hyperactivity and anger when he was awake. School was about to start, so his parents took him to a doctor to look at him. The doctor ordered an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to see his brainwaves as he slept to possibly identify the cause. It was determined that Patrick had sustained a brain injury when he fractured his skull the year earlier. The injury was described to Patrick as brain irritation. The doctor prescribed Dilantin, a medicine for epileptic patients, an anticonvulsant, even though there were no convulsions. The prescriptions helped him sleep and helped with the fits of anger. Patrick had yearly EEGs to monitor his brain activity and his need for the Dilantin to be administered. The EEGs were administered with electrodes attached to the skull to monitor brain activity while he slept in a sleep chamber. This lasted 11 years before he got a full bill of health that his brain irritations had healed. Also, the narcotics that kept him in a relatively low haze during the day and knocked him out at night, as the night dosage was double the daily dose, didn’t have to be taken any longer.
Patrick started school early, as his birthday landed in September after the school year started, and at four years old he was the youngest in his class. Kindergarten was fun, but the next year, in first grade, he experienced problems. The first was the mandatory vaccinations the school administered to all the children. They lined the children up, and a school nurse was at the end of the line with a needle. Patrick refused to allow the vaccine and freaked out. The school didn’t know that he had an immune deficiency and couldn’t have the inoculation. Back then, schools didn’t send home a permission slip, so his parents had no idea what was happening on school grounds. The more they tried to force Patrick, the more upset and physical he got. The issue was twofold: he wasn’t to have vaccines, and he was terrified of needles from the gamma globulin injections as a toddler. Patrick’s mother had to come down to the school to stop their intrusive vaccine policy and calm him down.
Also that year, it was determined that Patrick’s lack of concentration in the classroom was because he couldn’t see the blackboard, so he was sent for an eye exam, and it was determined he needed glasses. At the end of the year, they decided to hold him back to repeat first grade. Patrick, in addition to bad eyesight, had a reading disability. Later, it was identified in a casual conversation with his guidance counselor his senior year in high school that the issue was an underlying coordination or tracking issue between both eyes. When he read, his eyes must perform a synchronized “return sweep” from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. If this coordination breaks down, errors occur, and the same line is read over again. The solution was to use a ruler line by line to train the eye to move down a line and it would speed up his reading.
At seven years old, Patrick got infected with Croup. He was home from school with his older sister, who was three years older, while his parents were at work. Patrick had come downstairs unable to breathe. His sister thought quickly and ran him across the street to a neighbor, who rushed him into the bathroom and turned on the hot shower to produce steam that would make it easier to breathe. The paramedics came and took Patrick to the hospital, where he was again placed inside an oxygen breathing tent. His second stint as “The boy in The Plastic Bubble.” He was there for a week before returning home.
Other than the posted issues, Patrick led a normal childhood; he was introverted, and he was fine spending time alone. He liked the outdoors and sports. At the age of twelve, his life changed drastically as his family was moving again, this time from Milwaukee to Cleveland, Ohio. Not only was he going to a strange town, a strange school, a place with no friends, but he was also leaving behind his older brother, whom he adored. His older brother had just graduated High School and chose to not leave his life and friends. Patrick was moving somewhere new, and now, being the only son in the family unit, he was going to be the friendless new kid in a new city.
It was time to redraft or reimagine oneself to survive.
Photographer and Editor/Founder of AllMusicMagazine.com. My love of live music has taken me to incredible experiences with the top bands of all time in stadium shows to the smallest venues with equally inspiring musicians. Using the medium of photography and my publication, these memories will last forever.