Eleanor Milner

Born in 1933, Eleanor Milner was brought up on an East Yorkshire farm during wartime. She decided at an early age that she wanted to become a nurse and trained at Hull Royal Infirmary, before qualifying as a midwife at Liverpool Maternity Hospital. Returning to her native East Yorkshire, she accepted a post as a district nurse/midwife. She married in 1958 and moved to the Lincolnshire coast where her husband was the village sub-postmaster, and in 1964, the couple adopted a handicapped baby girl.

Eleanor returned to district nursing, later specialising in the care of the elderly, but a serious road accident in 1983 necessitated her premature retirement. Following her husband's untimely death, she took over the running of the village shop and was appointed sub-postmistress, later retiring to a bungalow in the village. She now lives near her daughter in Derbyshire, where she continues to enjoy her retirement.

The title, 98.4ºF to 37ºC, being the decimal change in the measuring of normal body temperature, has been chosen to reflect the changes in nursing and social history over the last seventy years.