A Parent's Nightmare: Doug Gets Polio in 1946: Part One

He survived polio at a young age and spent five months in a polio ward for boys in Children’s Hospital, Denver.    

 When Doug and I were growing up in the 1940s, the biggest fear that our parents had was that their children would get polio. I'm not sure you have learned much about the disease, but it's possible that you've been vaccinated against it. If you haven't been, then there is no longer the threat of a disease that afflicted mostly children. The vaccine for polio didn't become available  until 1955, when Doug and I were both in high school. 

    We were just little kids in the 1940s,  but even as little kids, we knew the dangers of getting polio. Just as our parents were frightened, we were also frightened. What we knew is that polio could cause us to be paralyzed even to the point we wouldn't be able to breathe. We saw pictures of sick children every day, especially those who were confined to "iron lungs," long metal tubes that breathed for the children who couldn't breathe on their own. In 1946, there were 26,000 cases of polio nationwide, according to the History Channel.

    Doug was one of those cases. I had hoped that he would write about that time in his life, but, instead, he told me and others about it. So this is what he told me.

    It was summertime, and Doug was visiting his grandparents in Nebraska. He began to feel sick and a little tired. I think he had a fever as well. This was the way Doug liked to talk about it: "It was an old country doctor that my grandparents called. He's the one who said I had polio."

    As Doug remembered it, his grandparents called his parents and then they put him on the train back to Denver. Polio is highly contagious, but that wasn't known at the time. In fact, scientists believed that it came from mosquitos or from contaminated drinking water. That's why big trucks scoured neighborhoods, spewing DDT as little kids gleefully followed the trucks and the poison fog. DDT was used to kill mosquitos. It is now banned.

    Doug remembered arriving at Union Station in Denver, where his parents were waiting for him. When he got off the train, he said that he was dragging his leg as he walked down the ramp to meet them. They took him straight to Children's Hospital. 

    At Children's Hospital, Doug had to stay in isolation for two weeks. No one was allowed to visit him during that time. I can't imagine the agony his parents must have felt at first, learning their son had polio and then finding out they wouldn't be allowed to see him for two weeks.

    After his quarantine time was up, Doug was moved to a polio ward of all boys of various ages. Doug spent FIVE MONTHS in that polio ward. The one thing he said  about that time is that the nurses were really strict, and if the boys misbehaved they would punish them by not giving them their meals for the day. Of course, the boys misbehaved. Sick as they were, they were still boys. They would have food fights and call each other names.It wasn't unusual, he said, for a boy to get out of bed and crawl to another boy's bed--crawling because he had polio and couldn't walk--to start a fight. I thing Doug was mostly an observer of these things. He really wasn't one to act out.

    The major event during that five months was a visit by the movie star, Shirley Temple. You will need to look her up. She was a famous child star, only a few years older that Doug. She was immensely popular and was known as "America's Sweetheart" at the time. But what Doug remembers most about her visit is that when she came to his bedside, she asked him, "When are you going home?"  And Doug said, "I don't know." I wish you could have heard Doug tell this story just to hear the way he sadly and plaintively said, "I don't know." 

Shirley Temple in 1943

 

    He also remembered his treatment for polio, which was created by an Australian nurse, Sister Kinney. Before her treatment became popular, polio patients' legs were put in plaster casts, which must have been awful. Sister Kinney's method was to apply warm, moist woolen blankets to the paralyzed legs. It's never been quite clear whether the treatment helped children walk again, although there are some documented cases. What is clear, though, is that those warm blankets were soothing and comforting. 

    Doug's mother Blanche told me that when they visited Doug, they always brought him a puzzle or some toy or book that would be a project for him, and that, when they left, he was so engrossed with his new thing they he didn't notice they had gone.

    After the five months, Doug had little after effects of his illness or the long time he was in the hospital. Many studies have been done on the trauma in children caused by the two week isolation period, but Doug never expressed any trauma. He spoke of that time matter-of-factually. He would never forget Shirley Temple's question, though.

(To be continued. See Part Two for when we all got vaccinated.)