Nancy R. Nichols, Polk County

Interviewee: Nancy Nichols
Interviewer: Claudia Frazer and Kathy Lincoln
Date of Interview: 11/14/07
Location of Interview: Cowles Library, Des Moines, IA

Cassette and Audio CD
Biographical Data Form
Oral History Release
Transcript

Nancy Nichols was about seven years old when she contracted polio in Brooklyn, Iowa. In 1941, the year she was diagnosed, polio was known as infantile paralysis. At the time, Nichols said the theory in their community was that the disease spread through mosquitoes. She lay in bed, under house quarantine with her mother and her younger sister, for six weeks. The doctor put her arm in a splint because the Sister Kenny methods (including physical therapy and hot packs) were not yet known or recognized as an acceptable treatment. Her father and her brother had to move out so they could go to work. Nancy mentioned that the local doctor gave her mother and her sister small doses of gamma globulin, “This was not very common,” Nancy noted. “I found out through the polio survivors group that many of their siblings caught slight cases of polio and did not even know it.” In her oral history, Nancy recalled, “After six weeks in bed, I could not walk. I had to learn to walk all over again. And, the exercises that the old country doctor had me do were similar to some of the things that I learned later that Sister Kenny did – I can remember one in particular – I had to stand on a big dictionary and curl my toes down over it.”