18. She Had a Seemingly Miraculous Recovery, But Continued to Struggle With Poor Health
Her mother did not give up, however, and when Odette was eleven, she took her to see a herbalist, deemed by many to be a quack. However, Odette’s mother figured that years of treatment by medical experts had failed to cure her daughter, so there was little to lose. The herbalist prescribed a solution to bathe the child’s eyes, and surprisingly, it worked. Within two weeks, Odette’s vision began to return, and by the time she was thirteen, her vision was fully restored.
However, no sooner had her eyesight been restored, than she was stricken with rheumatic fever – an inflammatory ailment that targets the brain, joints, heart, and skin – and was paralyzed once more. It took months before she recovered. Her mother decided that Odette needed clean sea air, so they moved to a small village in Normandy, near Dieppe. The girl was enrolled in a nearby convent school, where the nuns described her as intelligent and principled, but possessed of a volatile and petulant streak.
