I was lucky enough to be one of Salk’s “Kids!”
Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash
And now I hear you all say, “Huh?”
April, 1953. I wasn’t yet three years old. The country had just survived World War II, just 8 years before. Indeed, the World had just literally eked out a victory over extinction! Dwight Eisenhower had been recently inaugurated to the first term of his presidency.
And Dr. Jonas Salk was in the midst of his frenzy to finding his cure for a disease that was the scourge of the Earth. The disease that kept swimming pools empty for entire summers, more threatening than Covid! People (mostly kids) got sick and either died or were paralyzed forever!
Parents really worried about their kids back then.
Back in 1953, before my third birthday in July, I broke my arm. To this day I contend that my oldest brother was practicing his violin which led me to climb to the top of my crib (Yes, I was still in a crib. I was the youngest of 3 kids, so don’t judge) and jump. I don’t recall any purpose to that leap other than getting away from that damned violin screech! But I broke my arm.
Back then, doctors made house calls and our Dr. Crouse came to the house to mend my arm. He splinted it and told my parents to get an X-ray at the local hospital to verify his remedy. As it turned out, he had come from another house call of a polio patient of his just before he came to ours. He was a “carrier” but never got sick himself we were told.
And just like that, lives were changed.
Both my brother and I contracted the disease. Our house was quarantined by the Health Department. They tacked a big sign on our front door announcing our status. My older brothers were mortified! I was too young to give a damn.
I got really sick. I remember my parents placing me on the dining room table while I was screaming in pain like the baby I was, as my parents hovered over me, worried looks in their eyes. (Do I actually remember that at that age? I believe I do, but who knows after 70 years?)
I “remember” my dad telling my mother, “He’s gonna die if we don’t do something.” (Again, what do I know?) I was taken to the local hospital, diagnosed, and then taken to Pittsburgh General Hospital (Now Allegheny General) 35 miles away, for treatment of polio, my cast still intact for my broken arm.
My parents came to visit me every day for a week or so after they were allowed out of isolation, but one day, when they came, I wasn’t there. They had to go to the nurses’ desk to find out I had been transferred to D.T. Watson Home in Sewickley, a suburb of Pittsburgh, another 20 miles further away from my parents.
Remember, just after World War II, this was another war against polio! No quarter asked, none given. And no permission sought, either.
I was taken to be one of “Salk’s kids.”
From Wikipedia: “After successful tests on laboratory animals, on July 2, 1952, assisted by the staff at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children (now the Watson Institute), Salk injected 43 children with his killed-virus vaccine. A few weeks later, Salk injected children at the Polk State School for the Retarded and Feeble-minded. He vaccinated his own children in 1953 . In 1954 he tested the vaccine on about one million children, known as the polio pioneers. The vaccine was announced as safe on April 12, 1955.”
Yes, I had his vaccines up my ass so far as I know! And my parents weren’t asked or even informed before or after it happened.
I was there for one year. My parents could visit me for three hours on Sunday afternoons. Period. (Exceptions were made for holidays like Christmas, I understand.) I can still hear my mother wailing about that until I was a teenager — older even — how hard was that on my parents?!
Me? Hell, I was three years old. What did I know? This was OK. I slept in a childrens’ ward with eleven other kids, except for that mean nurse (Mary) who made me sleep on my back instead of my side the way I wanted to. And she actually tied me down to make sure I slept on my back. I remember THAT!, by God! She’s dead now. (I hope.)
I have other memories from that year away. I remember Noel. I can’t tell you what she looked like except she wore a leg brace on one leg. But I remember her being nice to me when we went to class. It was like a day care before they had day cares. Kindergarten, even. I remember learning the alphabet.
And I remember one of the cleaning ladies. Mary. She’d see me when I’d go on the elevator to go down to classes in the basement. And she always pulled out a piece of candy for me and called me her “Teddy.” She had an accent so her “r’s” were rolled. Maybe Italian? Anyway, she was my first “grandma” I remember.
My permanent deficits include a paralyzed left biceps and a paralyzed left deltoid sheath. Remnants from that cast. Nothing more. My brother, by the way, was lucky enough to suffer no permanent damage at all.
My upper left body was muscle-dead and “they” were concerned that, at my tender age, my spine would deform with the asymmetrical pull on the bones from the muscles that were working on one side and not working on the other as I grew.
So they made me go to a physical rehab center in Harmarville, another 30 miles from our home to be fitted for a half-body brace, steel rods wrapped in leather from my shoulders to my waist, with a leather corset to be fastened across my front, and a steel/leather sling to hold my paralyzed left arm, to keep my spine straight as I grew.
That was a childhood sentence, as I saw it. For I crime I didn’t commit, as I saw it.
And we would dutifully go to Harmarville three times a year as I grew older and I would get fitted for a new, bigger half-body brace. Which I wore well into my days of elementary school and, in fact, until I finished third grade. For what, five or six years I wore that monstrosity, until I finally rebelled.
I had reached a point where I couldn’t stand being that different from my “friends” anymore. I hated the complicated ritual of putting it on and taking it off. And I hated the stares, the comments (Oooh, kids can be so cruel!) and the agony of that damned brace rubbing in the same places on my body every day! (My hips where it settled were always raw.)
I told my mother, calmly, as I remember, as she was struggling to put that rigid frame around me, “That’s OK, mom. I don’t need that today.”
“Terry, of course you do. C’mon. Here,” as she held it up for me to wiggle into.
“No, Mom. I can’t wear that anymore! I Can’t!” There were a lot of tears involved there that day, for both of us, but she never made me wear that thing again.
And I’m sure there were calls from my parents to the doctors and to Harmarville and probably to God Himself for all I know, but I was determined that sunuvabitch wasn’t going on my back ever again!
I’ll be the first to tell you how lucky I was. I made a friend when I was younger. Tommy. He contracted polio about two weeks before I did. He was 3 years older than me. He was left paralyzed from the neck down.
My mother and Tommy’s mother were like an informal support group so she would take me over to his house so he and I could play chess, me sitting in a chair, he lying on his rocking bed. The board was on a table between us and he would tell me where to move his pieces as we played.
Painful bed sores were a constant problem for him. He finally succumbed to pneumonia at age 13. Yes, I was very lucky!
As it turned out, I was destined to grow to be 6' 5" as an adult. Standing tall made me proud in many ways, what with my being physically challenged as a youth, but that also came with drawbacks.
A weakened back was a partial result of the polio, I’m told, and my height preyed on that weakness. Even more so now as I get older, it seems, but at least I get to exercise to fight that. (See one of my previous posts on Medium here! Ha!)
For those who wonder, I’ve lived my life brace-free since then, and I consider myself to only have been physically challenged when I had that brace on during those years. Most people don’t notice I have anything wrong with me from polio, and if they do, I’m way beyond caring, so I consider myself a success in my rehabilitation.
Not surprisingly, I suppose, according to my wife, my mental state is more often questioned than my physical one. Except for now, however, I am fun to watch as I stagger about struggling with my balance as I age with creeping arthritis, but that’s another story.
Here’s the point!
I just read that the first case of polio in a decade in New York state just showed up in a northern suburb of the city. It’s an area with a population known to resist vaccines of all kinds because, I don’t know, they’re sub-human?
I have absolutely no patience with anti-vaxxers-of any type. You may see my point of view, or not. Frankly, I don’t care either way. I believe Darwin’s Theory will weed them out eventually, so it doesn’t matter to me what they choose for themselves now that we have vaccines and medicines to protect ourselves from selfish idiots.
But if your kid gets seriously ill from a disease you could have prevented, I believe you should lose all right to ever see your child again so you can never, ever abuse that child for the rest of your life, because, in a just world, you would be in jail with a life sentence for being so reckless with your child’s life!
I hope I didn’t sound too wishy-washy on that point. But I have my opinions.
I think I’ll end this here before I get radical.
