Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Bulbar was rare even then, usually it was the spinal kind, which also was given the iron lung, and bulbar was usually lethal, spinal not usually. A few had both and that was lethal.
The MD in Claremont waited too long to diagnose with certainty. My not being able to walk to the bathroom – total body paralysis – and blood draining from ears convinced him to call an ambulance.
No freeways in 1949. So finally panic trip in ambulance led by police from Claremont down Garvey Blvd, I think it was, to LA General. Lying on the gurney waiting to go into operating theatre I vividly remember (I was six) two MDs looking down on me and one saying to the other, “45 minutes more and he would be dead of suffocation.” A quick tracheotomy end ran that but the lung muscles were also paralyzed, thus the iron lung, which breathed for me. Had a 16th Century-type ruffle collar, tight-fitting, that kept air loss from inside to a minimum but was not pleasant to wear, especially when they pulled me in and out for bath. Then the daily penicillin (still new then) shot, huge, thick needles in those days, as a prophylactic against secondary infection. I disliked those shots more than the ruffle collar. I couldn’t turn over anyhow, total muscular paralysis except I could move my head a bit from side to side.
My parents were not monied, that may have had something to do with the late diagnosis, I don’t know. March of Dimes stepped in and paid the entire bill. My parents couldn’t have paid any of it. Several other kids in Claremont same time also had polio, most minor, but one had spinal, David Ronfeldt, son of a Professor at one of the Claremont Colleges, if I recall. Dave had a career at Rand Corporation, now retired, is on the web. Was in the iron lung next to mine in the ward. Ronfeldt’s mother home-tutored me back to grade-level.
You were right to fear having to be in an iron lung. You can imagine my comparable fear is suffocation. When I was a child, my deepest fear was of nuclear holocaust.
Numerous MDs and nurses were lost at LA and around the country to that epidemic, treating the patients. It was a labor of love on their part, like Soldiers on a battlefield. They risked their very lives to take care of us. There was no vaccine yet.
After three months at LA General in an iron lung the MDs sent me home, but I still was largely though not totally paralyzed. So they sent me to Casa Colina for additional recoup. Three months total there. Towards the end I got pissed off that the lady in charge would not let us have dessert – we had group meals at a long common table, like a monastery, which it may well have been earlier – if we didn’t finish our meal. So one day, when she denied me dessert, I just got up and started to walk back to my room. That was a no-no, had to be in a wheel chair. I recall vividly a nurse with robes flying flying towards me, yelling to stop, with a wheel chair. Made me laugh. I was six. Still brings a smile.
After Casa Colina, I think the MDs tried sending me home again but it was still too soon. Off I went for another three months at a place called Rancho Los Amigos, still a physical illness rehab/recoup facility. I remember nothing about that beyond nice times in the pool but with a rather strict lady. Still, the staff seemed to want to help me, for which I was grateful.
I think finally epidemiologists have tracked down the outbreaks then to human feces particles in public pools. Chlorination was introduced then or earlier, I don’t know, and if earlier, then increased after 1949, which was a huge – and last, so far – epidemic nation-wide. But for March of Dimes and their angels many families would have been bankrupted for life.
Not the David Graham you knew at Redlands and Union, was it. 🙂
You may imagine that I am not a proponent of shunning childhood vaccinations, such as for polio. 🙂
One intriguing outcome of the saga was the March of Dimes called on me several times in not much later years to visit polio patients at LA General to buck up their courage. There were still quite a few there. It was not long after 1949. There was a door my mother could not go through but I, being considered immune, could. Big toot. I must have been, because I didn’t relapse. At least not then. I enjoyed talking with the patients in the iron lungs and trying to cheer them up, as a survivor. I was very happy to do that service for March of Dimes and LA General. And I could go where my mother could not. Yeah! 🙂 Still sub-teen at the time.
Ronfeldt had a relapse in the 90s I think. I have not had one that I know of. Relapses, however, do happen to patients of that era. The overall effect of polio – beyond the physical – is a very deep,inexpressible and abiding sadness or sorrow. I have seen it in all other patients I have met in later years and expressed that to them and they have always agreed. I think my love of Bach’s fugues is at least in part driven by their speaking to me that the world is still intact, it still functions, and beautifully. When you are paralyzed, the world does not function. Paralysis makes the world unbound, flopping about, feel not intact. It’s hard to explain, I can’t really do it. When you know from experience that nothing has to work the way you want it to, that the whole world can be flopping about aimlessly, without control, it makes you very sad and very humble at the same time. But sad/sorrow is the overwhelming feeling from it. There is no healing that sadness. I can almost look in the eyes of someone and tell if they have had polio or been paralyzed.
Update 1: On the importance of vaccinations for communicable diseases.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
