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In the Shadow of Polio: A Personal and Social History

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I was eleven when my mother contacted both bulbar and spinal polio in July of 1954. She lived for seventeen years. She was confined to a rocking bed and a chest respirator. She eventually died at home while confined to an iron lung. My brother age 12 and Sister age 8 also contacted very mild forms of polio. My father and I did not show any symptoms of the disease. For the first month of her hospitalization we (children) lived with my father parents on a farm. When school started we were brought home and were under the care of a housekeeper and neighbors. My father traveled to Ann Arbor almost every day to be with her. Unlike Kathryn's father, our father never abandoned us children; nor did he ever give up on our mother. As a summery comment I would have to say that he truly lived up to his marriage vows. Although we were older when out mother contacted the disease, out lives pretty much paralleled that of Kathryn and her brother. Out mother spent almost two years! in the "Polio Ward, 9th floor" of the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. I don't remember exactly when she came home to stay, but she did get home on some weekends. I remember that she was allowed to come home for Christmas 1954. It was for the day and she had quite a contingent of caregivers and equipment. When she did finally come home to stay, we were encouraged to lay down with her in the rocking bed. Boys being boys, my brother and I didn't do that to often, but my sister was a regular rocker. We did assist a lot with her care and physical therapy. We spent many weekends visiting and making friends with polio victims; I often wonder what ever became of them. Some I know to be deceased. (I corresponded with one young lady while I did my tour of service in Germany. I saw her once after I got out). I often accompanied my father when he took my mother on outings. His station wagon was outfitted with a porta-lift on the roof (plus he had a portable porta-l! ift on casters) for getting her in and out of the car and i! nto a wheel chair. The station wagon was also equipped to carry her on a stretcher. On vivid memory I have is that of my father always having to drive around to find a spot with at least two parking spaces so we would have room to unload her. She usually traveled in the front passenger seat. This of course was in the days before there were handicapped parking. To this day it annoys me greatly to see some one illegally parked in a handicapped parking place. I remember that my mother had the best of care at Ann Arbor and she had a "favorite" nurse. Her name was Doris Courtier; she very often would come home with my mother on weekends to take care of her. After my mother left the hospital for good, they continued to correspond and Doris came on weekends to visit quite frequently. She was almost like a sister to my mother and an aunt to us children. My father continued to work his normal schedule and take care of my mother evenings and through the night. He almost always! prepared the evening meals and the weekend meals. We helped where we could. With his demanding schedule her (they) always felt that it was necessary for him to take us children for a vacation every summer. This afforded him a break and gave him that one chance each year to spend some time with his children. I was the first child to leave the nest, having gone into the army in 1960. My brother followed a year later joining the air force. He married while in the air force, so never returned home to live. My sister married in 1963, so she naturally moved out with her husband. I returned home from the army in September of 1963, having been in Germany for 2 and a half years. There was a period of over 6 months that it was just my mother, father and housekeeper\caregiver who were at home. After returning home I lived with my parents for a period of time and eventually moved to Detroit to go to school. After school I returned to our hometown, married and a year later mov! ed to Buffalo NY. My brother was now living in Southern In! diana and my sister was living in Western Michigan. All during this time, we children would try to make at least one or two weekend visits a month. My mother was able to sit up in a wheel chair and loved to play cards, so that is how we spent our evenings on our weekend visits. She was able to suspend her arms in slings and had a special holder for the cards. She had just enough of a grasp in her fingers to hold the cards and pull them from the holder to "sling" them onto the table when it was her turn to play. She did need to have someone initially place them into the holder. Now looking back, as we were growing up I guess there was a lot of things that we didn't have that other children our age had, but not having them, I guess we didn't really miss them. All in all I feel that our parents did exceptional well in providing for us children. I also feel that my father was truly a saint throughout his married life to our mother. With limited time and income he was able t! o maintain a comfortable home (added on to and remodeled to accommodate her equipment), always food on the table and provide for her continued care. Like Kathryn said in her book, the March of Dimes took on other diseases and discontinued their help with polio victims.

The book was inspirational and taught me a lot about the disease- things I never knew; but when I read the summary for this book, I thought it was going to be a story, not a research paper. Yes, Ms. Black does tell snippets of her mother's story every other chapter, but there is so much nitty gritty info in between- unless you want to know the entire history of the disease, don't buy this book. I did, thinking I would get an in depth view into the life of a family affected by polio, and instead got, for the most part, an essay on the history and effects of polio. Please don't be mislead by the title- it's a good title, but it conveys a personal and intimate sense which is not entirely present in the book itself. I hope my experience with this book helps you in the future.

As a daughter of a polio survivor, I found this book to be an excellent resourse. the excellent research and doucumentation of a social and scientific phenomena of this century.

This book is incredible! I was born in 1959 and received the polio vaccine as an infant. I am now a pediatrician grateful to have never seen a case of polio. This profound and moving book does an excellent job of showing how a devastating disease can ravage family. It is also a fascinating history of polio in America. Although this book is excellent for anyone interested in the impact of polio, I think it also offers great insights for healthcare professionals as well. What a shame it is that polio surivors have been largely forgotten and their ongoing problems ignored.

Kathryn lost her mother to Polio when she was 4, then her dad deserted her and her brother, and her grandparents wouldn't talk about it. Loss is experienced by many of us in our life, but when you feel down, try walking in another person's shoes. I hope the writing of this book was therapeutic for Kathyrn, as we have to face the past in order to get on with our lives.

If you lived through the Polio Epidemics of the past, then you will know the time Kathryn is speaking about. And, if you only know polio as a vaccine, then this book will give you insight into what a traumatic time it was for families.

This is no romance novel, but it is food for the soul. I enjoyed the chance to read it, and will add it to my library!

Jann, polio survivor, 1953

I'm old enough to have had friends who got polio when I was in grade school and I had several classmates in college who had polio. My parents sent us away to camp in the mountains to try to get us away from the summer heat where polio thrived. Reading this book will help those too young to have experienced the agony of this epidemic disease to understand the wonder of immunizations and perhaps lose a little of their complacency and resistance to getting their babies' shots.

I enjoyed this book very much, couldn't put it down. I cried and it gave me nightmares, but it is an extremely good read. The book provides a very good and through description of the disease, how it physically affects patients and the effects on families and communities; rich in history. I was surprised not to find any mention of Hilary Koprowski, who was the first to create a polio vaccine, before Sabin. I also question if it was the vaccine that was responsible for eradicating polio from the western world due to the fact that two years after the Salk vaccine people had to be "lured" into taking the vaccine.

From p. 231 "Not only was raising money for the polio cause increasingly difficult, but so was getting people vaccinated. The drive toward nationwide immunization never regained its momentum after the Cutter scare. The short supplies of 1955 turned into a surplus in 1957, and the NFIP had to work to lure citizens to take the vaccine they had waited so long for. That year, sixty-seven million people were in the top-priority bracket for the vaccine - people under 20 and pregnant women - but just twenty-five million had received the recommended three injection. In the fall of 1957 the journal of American Medical Association ran an editorial urging doctors to nudge patients to get their vaccines...... Thirty-seven million Americans still had not been vaccinated at all, and another forty-four million needed second or third injections" Why did polio rates drop so drastically and continue to drop if a seemingly small percentage of people were getting vaccinated?

The book also fails to mention that changes were made in disease classification after the vaccine became available. Prior to the vaccine, a polio epidemic was defined as 20 cases per 100,000, but after the vaccine, it became 35 cases per 100,000. Additionally, the diagnostic criteria also changed. Before, a diagnosis of polio could be made if there was evidence of paralysis for 24 hours. Later on, in order to get a polio diagnosis, the patient had to exhibit neurological symptoms that persisted for at least sixty days after the onset of symptoms or the patient died.
I also question the vaccine effectiveness because children in countries like Pakistan, India... continue to get polio even after 5 or 6 doses of the vaccine. Why have we not been able to meet the goal or eradicating it by the year 2000? It's 11 years later.

Great book, I highly recommend it.

I read this book after glancing over it quickly at the library. Thinking it more a "browsing" book than a "reading" book, I quickly became quite absorbed in the stories being told. It is a chronicle of a different time, when a disease that predominantly struck children left its scar on the victim, her family, and society. Mass "hysteria" (empty neighborhood pools, for example), not altogether unwarranted given the evidence and the times, gripped the world as parents strove to protect their children from the dreaded iron lung. I know one reviewer complained it had too much "nitty gritty," but I have to say that the information was presented in such an accessible manner that I couldn't get enough of it. And, of course, there's a "happy ending," that is, the development of an effective vaccine. As a scientist, it's probably the best "popular" book about a disease and about its societal impact that I've read, and I recommend it highly.

This memoir written by the daughter of a woman that had polio and a history of polio is an excellent book. I really felt like I knew the author, her mother and the whole polio experience much better after I read this book.

As a polio survivor myself, I am fascinated by the biographies of others. I am very much reminded of TO CATCH THE SNOWFLAKES, another survivor who did not allow himself to be a victim.