The narrator’s illness has a profound effect on her and her family.

It specially affects her mental state as

this form of event has never taken place before. In the beginning, the narrator expresses her excitement
caused by the sickness, as they have to rush immediately at eleven o’clock at night to the hospital to
solve her condition. Ironically, the immediate aftermath of the operation is not as enticing as the trip to
the hospital. The writer portrays this dull and boring sensation with, ‘So I lay, minus my appendix, fo
some days looking out of a hospital window’.

The writer describes her illness retrospectively, and realizes that she was unaware of the financial
impact of her operation on the family:’I don’t suppose it ever crossed my head to wonder how my father
was going to pay for this distinction’. However, the narrator joyfully writes about the perks of having had
an operation and attending school. She enjoys special treatment and exemption from all physical
activity, “enjoyed being excused from physical training for longer than necessary’.

Furthermore, this liberty extends to the summer although, she was operated on, in winter and has made
a full recovery. Her recovery is expressed as, ‘I looked well, I did chores around the house, I read books
as usual. It is evident that she has made a full physical recovery. Although, she seems well, her sickness
has freed her from many household chores. Subsequently, she finds out that it is the removal of a
‘turkey egg’ sized mass that has given her this liberty. ‘It seems that the mysterious turkey egg must
have given me some invalid status, so that I could spend part of the time wandering about like a visitor.’

The writer’s improvement in physical health doesn’t account for her mental health, as she seemed to
get extremely emotional as time passed. She mentions, ‘this uselessness and strangeness I felt’, and ‘ I
had begun to have trouble getting to sleep’