Polio

When I was going into 5th grade there was a polio epidemic. Not much was know about polio at that time and there was no cure yet. Jonas Salk had not finalized his vaccine. I remember that summer -- that would be 1953 -- my dad told me that someone in town had polio. He explained to me what the symptoms were and asked me to tell him if I felt anything like what could lead to the disease.

I think that was the wrong thing to do. He told me my legs might hurt. Well, I was going through a growth spurt that summer, and guess what, my legs hurt. I told daddy every day that my legs were hurting, and everyday he would take my temperature, check my throat, and make sure my legs were working and working in good order -- he checked that by making me walk a lot.

Polio is nothing to laugh about, even though some of the things we did may seem ridiculous in retrospect.

I remember pictures in the newspaper almost every day of another child in an iron lung. Another child in leg braces. Articles about some Sister in Australia who was having success with rehabilitating children and adults who got polio.

Polio caused paralysis and children could be left mildly affected or horribly affected. Some people who contracted polio were left no being able to breathe on their own, thus the iron lungs.

After Jonas Salk found a vaccine, we were all -- the entire town -- herded into the school gym (that would be Downing school) and were given lumps of sugar with the vaccine squirted on the sugar -- the vaccine was colored reddish purple as I remember -- and the cube of sugar was to make it swallowable.

Polio has been basically eradicated in the USA because of the vaccine which all you young ones got when you were babies. Just we "elders" remember eating the cube.

Although my legs hurt a lot that summer (growth spurt) the Lord protected our family from that disease.