3.21.20
Sheltering in Place - Day Two
Deadly viruses and tennis!
Polio was the coronavirus of the 1940s and 50s, at least it was for our family, church community and neighborhood. USA Today has a good story about this today. It hit home for me; I have been thinking about polio and the personal parallels to the coronavirus quite a bit in the last few days.
One day around 1950 or so my older sister Kathi woke up and could not walk. She was quickly diagnosed with polio. A classmate at my parochial school in Rhode Island had several family members with the disease. And everyone in the neighborhood knew someone on a respirator or in an iron lung. I recall polio hit Rhode Island hard; everyone was on edge for a couple of years.
For kids, it was terrifying. Most likely adults too but I was a kid with a sick sister. I saw the illness through a child’s eyes and those are my memories.
My mother, an RN, came to my classroom one day and gave everyone a sugar cube to chew, the latest delivery mechanism for Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. A year earlier we had been given shots at school. One girl in my class was so afraid of the procedure that she nervously ate a box of crayons, hoping to escape the needle. We all knew she had done it because her tongue was purple.
My memory of my sister’s illness is sketchy. I was an infant when she got it, but the recovery took years so I grew up with it. I recall long drives to what I know now was Boston Children’s hospital. I was forced to wait in the backseat of the car because children were not allowed in hospitals back then. My parents did not talk about her illness when she was sick or later when she recovered. Truth is we never talked about anything unpleasant. If our parents did share information about difficult matters, they usually lied. Actually they always lied. They could never quite tell the truth about the past or anything unpleasant.
I was afraid. My friends were afraid. My parents were afraid.
The 1950s were scary. Everyone was building concrete underground bomb shelters and stocking them with canned food and dry goods to protect us from the bombs the Soviet Union was surely going to rain down on us. I assumed incorrectly that a bomb shelter would protect us from bombs. I knew it would not protect us from a virus.
Iron lungs were the scariest. Before I google “iron lung picture,” I’ll give you my recollection from memory. It was designed to keep patients with acute respiratory failure breathing. It looked like a coffin on a gurney. The patient’s entire body was inside, only their head protruded. Imagine being in a mobile MRI tube and never being able to leave it. It looked like hell to me. And I had a 1950s Catholic schoolboy image of hell so you know it was bad.
Jonas Salk saved us. Polio was quickly erased from the planet. My sister recovered and began what we now now call physical therapy. When she was better, they recommended she play tennis to improve her balance and coordination. My parents dragged me along to lessons also and I am forever grateful for that. My sister got polio and I discovered tennis, a lifetime passion.
Scientists around the globe are working feverishly to come up with a vaccine. The next Jonas Salk is out there somewhere. He or she will emerge and we will prevail.
My polio-free sister and her husband are sheltering in place in Southern California. We were visiting them when our journey east and this blog began. We go there every year to visit, play tennis, hike and attend Indian Wells, the combined ATP/WTA tennis tournament in the Coachella Valley.
So it all comes back to deadly viruses and tennis. Hopefully one day soon we can add a vaccine to the mix!
This blog began as a way to chronicle an unplanned journey east through a nation slowly discovering it uncharted territory. We are now home but the crisis and the journey forward continues to evolve and grow. Americans are aware now that life as we know it will be different. Well perhaps not those idiots partying on Florida beaches. But most everyone else does.
I plan to continue to write about our lives as our the journey unfolds, I hope you will read my musings and comment. We are living in a time worth remembering.
Be safe!
Sheltering in Place - Day Two
Deadly viruses and tennis!
Polio was the coronavirus of the 1940s and 50s, at least it was for our family, church community and neighborhood. USA Today has a good story about this today. It hit home for me; I have been thinking about polio and the personal parallels to the coronavirus quite a bit in the last few days.
One day around 1950 or so my older sister Kathi woke up and could not walk. She was quickly diagnosed with polio. A classmate at my parochial school in Rhode Island had several family members with the disease. And everyone in the neighborhood knew someone on a respirator or in an iron lung. I recall polio hit Rhode Island hard; everyone was on edge for a couple of years.
For kids, it was terrifying. Most likely adults too but I was a kid with a sick sister. I saw the illness through a child’s eyes and those are my memories.
My mother, an RN, came to my classroom one day and gave everyone a sugar cube to chew, the latest delivery mechanism for Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. A year earlier we had been given shots at school. One girl in my class was so afraid of the procedure that she nervously ate a box of crayons, hoping to escape the needle. We all knew she had done it because her tongue was purple.
My memory of my sister’s illness is sketchy. I was an infant when she got it, but the recovery took years so I grew up with it. I recall long drives to what I know now was Boston Children’s hospital. I was forced to wait in the backseat of the car because children were not allowed in hospitals back then. My parents did not talk about her illness when she was sick or later when she recovered. Truth is we never talked about anything unpleasant. If our parents did share information about difficult matters, they usually lied. Actually they always lied. They could never quite tell the truth about the past or anything unpleasant.
I was afraid. My friends were afraid. My parents were afraid.
The 1950s were scary. Everyone was building concrete underground bomb shelters and stocking them with canned food and dry goods to protect us from the bombs the Soviet Union was surely going to rain down on us. I assumed incorrectly that a bomb shelter would protect us from bombs. I knew it would not protect us from a virus.
Iron lungs were the scariest. Before I google “iron lung picture,” I’ll give you my recollection from memory. It was designed to keep patients with acute respiratory failure breathing. It looked like a coffin on a gurney. The patient’s entire body was inside, only their head protruded. Imagine being in a mobile MRI tube and never being able to leave it. It looked like hell to me. And I had a 1950s Catholic schoolboy image of hell so you know it was bad.
Jonas Salk saved us. Polio was quickly erased from the planet. My sister recovered and began what we now now call physical therapy. When she was better, they recommended she play tennis to improve her balance and coordination. My parents dragged me along to lessons also and I am forever grateful for that. My sister got polio and I discovered tennis, a lifetime passion.
Scientists around the globe are working feverishly to come up with a vaccine. The next Jonas Salk is out there somewhere. He or she will emerge and we will prevail.
My polio-free sister and her husband are sheltering in place in Southern California. We were visiting them when our journey east and this blog began. We go there every year to visit, play tennis, hike and attend Indian Wells, the combined ATP/WTA tennis tournament in the Coachella Valley.
So it all comes back to deadly viruses and tennis. Hopefully one day soon we can add a vaccine to the mix!
This blog began as a way to chronicle an unplanned journey east through a nation slowly discovering it uncharted territory. We are now home but the crisis and the journey forward continues to evolve and grow. Americans are aware now that life as we know it will be different. Well perhaps not those idiots partying on Florida beaches. But most everyone else does.
I plan to continue to write about our lives as our the journey unfolds, I hope you will read my musings and comment. We are living in a time worth remembering.
Be safe!
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