A young boy comes down with polio before the Salk Vaccine.
A Body Divided
2
I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already being distributed among schoolchildren across the United States to stem the tide of the polio epidemic that had caught the nation up in a near panic by that time. Such was the state of dread and paranoia then that when word of the Salk vaccine hit the streets, everyone saw it in those days as a near miracle.
There was an exceptionally dark and sarcastic punch line to an old joke I remember from around that time. A man, who's devastated by every sickness and disease known to humankind, is crawling up the church steps on his hands and knees to the altar, looking up at the heavens and asking: "Why me? Why me?" The roof of the church blowing off, an enormous hand pointing out of the sky and the voice booming out of the clouds: "Because you piss me off!"
Having missed that vaccine by six months, I am going to tell you right now that I would be lying royal purple in the face, and lightning would probably set my hair on fire, if I had the cheek to say that the phrase: "Why me?" had not crossed my mind at least once during my life. That old joke was the kind of gallows humor we came to appreciate among the crowd of kids I knew on the Polio Ward at the hospital. And what an anniversary gift this must have been for me to be bringing home to my mother and father! That smoky autumn day in 1953 was the first time that my mother's head began to literally wobble, as it went on to do throughout the rest of her life. And almost overnight my father's hair went gray.
"Your son has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the night, Bess. He has polio." Those were the words our family doctor chose when breaking the news to my parents on that ill-starred day in September. Our family doctor, a man with good, honest intentions, hadn't counted on the blow this kind of report could deliver to someone like my mother. In truth, he may as well have used a hammer on her. Dr. Walters caught her by the arm as she staggered and started slumping to the ground. His clipboard dropped, bouncing on the linoleum floor of the hospital while he helped to steady her.
"Oh! I don't know what happened," she said. "I got dizzy."
My mother looked around at both men, Dr. Walters and my father, as they guided her to a chair outside the door to my hospital room. I could hear them clearly from my bed.
"The physicians here at Hinsdale told me they may have to perform a tracheotomy to open your boy's throat, Otto," Dr. Walters said to my father. "If he doesn't begin swallowing pretty soon, that is. The physician in charge of the evening shift told me Jerry can't keep anything down, even plain water. Just keeps spitting it up. They're afraid he'll die of dehydration, certainly starvation, if they don't operate."
"Oh, Otto!" my mother groaned. "Why is this happening to our son?" I didn't hear my father say anything.
"What did we do wrong, Dr. Walters?" asked my mother. "Tell me!" You could hear in her voice how much the doctor had frightened her.
"Now, Bess, calm down. Let's try to take a minute here and see if maybe you can remember what Jerry was doing all summer long? Who he was hanging around with, I mean."
"Oh, there's a whole gang of them," she responded. "He's a real leader, that boy."
"Yes, but, who exactly was he hanging out with, Bess? Try to think now, were there any signs of anything anything unusual at all?"
"Well, let's see," she said, and there came a long pause. I can see my mother's large, frightened brown eyes in my mind, her eyebrows raised already in permanent surprise, trying to somehow gather herself, while at the same time trying to ward off the appearance of hysteria. "Well, the first day he got that headache," she ventured hesitantly, "there was that Stephen Wellings boy the next block over, on Cornell Street," it seemed to me her voice had gotten a tremor to it "and Scott Yohan too. They were all three of them in Stephen Wellings' backyard. Jerry told me they had a big bonfire going. They'd spent the afternoon lighting those seventeen-year locusts on fire and letting them fly. I could smell the bonfire on him the minute he came in the door.
"Those boys were the only two he was with, Doctor, the day he came home with that darned headache. He was holding his head in both hands. That was the first sign there was that anything was wrong. He was perfectly normal until he came home with that awful headache. He never complains, you know how he is until that headache of his, Dr. Walters." She went quiet for a moment.
"Anything else, Bess? Anything you can recall that was unusual during the summer? Anything wrong with any of his friends, or . . . anything you can tell me, Bess. This is important now. Try to remember."
"Well, there was little Ricky Stone over on Summit Street. His father was the one that got killed in a construction accident. He pushed another man out of the way and got killed under some iron that fell. Well, that's Ricky. Nothing wrong with him that I know of. And then there's always Andy Richards, across the street."
Then my mother started to gather steam. "Boy Jerry and that Andy! He'd be lost without Andy, let me tell you. Those two have been pals ever since he was three years old and Andy was two. Jerry even gave Andy a haircut one time for a dollar when Andy had to stand up for his sister's wedding. Oh, and was his mother ever angry and how! They'd given Andy two dollars, see, to go into town for a haircut"
"Okay, okay, Bess," said the doctor, cutting her short. "Anybody else you can think of?"
"Well, not so fast, Dr. Walters," my mother said. "It's Andy's mother she isn't all there, you know. Something went wrong with her mind. One day she took off every stitch of clothing and walked right down the street in broad daylight. And little Andy had to go running down the block and lead her back home by the hand. Do you think our son could have caught something from her, Doctor?"
"No, Bess, no I don't think so."
My mother, my father, and our family doctor went silent outside my door. Inside the room I was having trouble breathing through my nostrils. For some reason they were all clogged up now. I found myself having to take a breath through my open mouth if I wanted to get any real air at all, though this didn't make much sense to me. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I struggled to breathe normally through the clogged nostrils. When that wouldn't work, my mouth burst open, gasping for the air my lungs were trying to take in.
"Listen to him in there, Otto," Dr. Walters told my father. I couldn't hear whether my father made any kind of reply. I suspect not.
My mother stuck her head inside my door, listening for some time. I kept quiet. "Are you okay, son?" she asked. She hung on the word: 'son.' This wasn't like her at all. She had never, ever called me 'son' before. Usually she would call me: Honey. Or else, when I was bad, it was: Jerry Allen! With the sternest voice she could muster.
"I'm okay, mom." However, my mouth had become gummed up, and I had trouble getting the words to come out right. I struggled to say something more. I wanted to tell her something about my friend, Andy, which we were supposed to be doing the next day, but I grew confused. Instead I tried to say: "Thirsty, Mom. I'm thirsty." But really what came out of my lips was more of a weak, pasty whistle that she didn't hear.
When I tried drawing in another breath, the nose situation had gotten even worse, and I had to suck in air through my mouth.
"Maybe he's got a bad head cold," said my mother, who was an optimist at heart.
"For God's sake, Bess!" the doctor exclaimed. "He's struggling just to get air in there! Can't you hear him? That's bulbar polio. It paralyzes the throat and lungs. They're giving him a dose of the virus in order to try getting his body to react to it and build up an immunity, to ward off any further damage. Listen to him, Otto. They're going to have to do something more immediate!"
"Oh, Otto!" cried my mother. "What's going to happen to our little boy?"
"Bess, please now, listen," said Dr. Walters. "Did Jerry do a lot of swimming this summer?" The doctor had been reading up on the symptoms of polio because the epidemic was churning its way through children across the country, laying waste to tens of thousands already, including even adults by now, but it had gotten especially bad among schoolchildren. This really had him concerned.
"Yes, he did, Doctor!" my mother burst out. "They were swimming down at that dirty old Sugar Creek!" She was starting to get more out of control.
"Oh, Doctor," she went on, "I told him: Stay away from that filthy swimming hole it's full of crawfish, turtles, bugs, God knows what spiders but he wouldn't listen! They just kept going back there all the time. He's so stubborn! Oh, I don't know, Otto! Why couldn't you do something with him?"
"Now, dear," my dad's voice cracked. My father would never show very much in the way of how he might be feeling, and his voice really didn't crack with emotion too often. I had never even seen him cry, that I could remember. It wasn't in him to let loose easily. He was a man of few words, and a man with a quick temper. I'd been afraid of that temper ever since he had given me the only beating of my life once for setting fire, quite by accident, to a nearby field. The truth is, the beating was actually over the discovery that I'd been hoarding matches with which to light cigarettes. It wasn't a true beating, but rather more of a hell of a walloping all over the living room, while he held onto me by one arm and wouldn't let go. Instead he kept hitting me and hitting me with his other hand until his anger diminished. I would never forget that thrashing. My entire backside was black and blue. I saw it in the mirror, and couldn't believe how bad things looked. And I couldn't sit comfortably the whole next week. But the fact is, I didn't quit smoking either.
Now, in the hallway outside my hospital room, I heard my mother letting out a muffled cry.
"Come on, Bess," said Dr. Walters. "Come on now. It's going to be all right. You did everything you could. He's a strong boy and he's in good hands here." Then my mother let loose and began sobbing out loud. Both of the men went silent for some time, until I heard our doctor saying, "He'll pull through now, don't you worry, Bess. It's the good thing I rushed back from my vacation though, Otto. We got him here in the nick of time."
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