Brannon, Carol - Story County

General Comments :

The playful summer of 1949 was coming to an end. Gone were the days of learning to shell black-eyed peas and swim at Virginia Beach, VA. This would be important, later. I don't remember my family ever talking about polio epidemics at that time.

My mother, Charlotte Davis, my sister, Judy, my grandparents, Amiel and Elsie Roggensack from Mason City, IA and I were traveling from Hopewell, VA to Minneapolis MN in late August. I was to start second grade in September. My father, Leonard Davis, remained at Ft. Lee, VA to finish Army Reserve Camp.

The first or second morning on the road, I woke up feeling groggy. At breakfast, I ravishingly drank my glass of orange juice, then drank another family member's orange juice without asking. My mother reprimanded me for that. During the day, my malaise increased as did my first and most horrendous headache. I remember lying in the back seat of the car with my head in my grandmother's lap. The only thing other thing I ate all day was a cold milkshake. It was all I wanted.

That night, we were to stay at a guest house in Normal, Illinois. I was far from feeling normal. I remember sitting on the floor with my legs out in front of me, leaning against the bed. The lady who owned the guest house pulled my mother aside and said, "We had a polio epidemic here 2 weeks ago and they published the symptoms in the paper. I don't want to alarm you, but I think your daughter has some of those symptoms. Do you want me to call my doctor?" Mother told her by all means to call her doctor.

At nine o'clock that night, I walked up the flight of steps to the second floor office of the doctor. I don't remember his name, perhaps a Dr. Anderson. I know it ended in son. As I lay on the exam table, I watched the doctor raise my right leg, perhaps 30 degrees. It felt like it was stretched over the back of my head. My mother later told me that paralysis was setting in in my right leg, an arm and my neck. The doctor wanted to perform a spinal tap at the Normal hospital to verify it was polio. I had to be carried down the steps I walked up, I couldn't walk anymore.

The results of the spinal tap at the hospital proved I did, indeed, have polio. The Sister Kenney Foundation representative was there to ask if mother needed financial assistance. How amazing - at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. The year before, my father had taken out polio insurance on both me and my sister so my mother said if she needed additional assistance she would let the Foundation know.

Then the doctor approached my mother and asked if she would give permission for me to participate in an experimental program to try and stop the disease or symptoms. The doctor said that a doctor or researcher in Chicago was working on something to help stop the spread of polio. They would have to have whatever it was flown in from Chicago. "But", he said, "you have to be sure that these symptoms haven't been present for more than 24 hours." Mother believed my symptoms had started that morning. My mother later told me she thought I didn't have anything to lose, the paralysis was becoming more pronounced. So she signed the papers which freed the doctor and the hospital from any responsibility if things didn't work out. Mother said it was the most awful feeling she had when she signed the papers, but that it also offered hope.

The doctor told Mother to go back to the guest house and get some rest. She stayed in her car until she saw two Illinois State troopers arrive at the hospital, delivering a package brought from the local airport. Only then did she go back to the guest house.

Mother was told it took about 2 hours for the IV serum to be injected. It became a race against time. Whatever was going to be used on me had to be flown in from Chicago, Illinois and the treatment completed before 8 a.m.

I believe Mother was told the serum was started at 5 a.m. I remember seeing an IV pole with a clear glass bottle hanging on it. It looked like the bottle was full of blood. Orange tubing snaked down into my arm. I've often wondered if it was the blood of people who had had polio and it had their antibodies in it.

I remained in the Normal, Illinois hospital for a week. From my bed near a window of my room, waving good-bye to my sister and grandparents was very sad for me. They were taking Judy back to Iowa. Fortunately, no one else in my family contracted polio.

The doctor said there was a two week incubation period for the polio virus. When they counted back 14 days, it was the day I was swimming at Virginia Beach, VA. What I remember is that a huge grasshopper landed on my chest while swimming, and I smashed it on me.

My new plaid dress that I wore to first see the doctor was burned. So were all my comics, Lone Ranger and cowboy plastic toys and other gifts I had received in the hospital.

I was told there was a boy in the next room who had polio. I don't know what happened to him.

But, at the end of the week, I walked out of the hospital on my own two feet. There was a moment of hesitation when I saw the steps, but I found out I was just a regular kid again.

On the way home, Mother stopped at a town. We went through a mobile exhibit which had a live person in it inside an iron lung. Mother told me that that could have happened to me. I believe the exhibit was a way to raise funds to fight polio.

After-treatment care included a tricycle with blocks on the pedals for me to exercise my legs. They didn't have training bikes then. When I crashed my sister's two-wheel bicycle, my parents got me one. Also, during second grade, I had to rest during recesses. I hated that.

But the story doesn't end there. About 5 years later, when I was 12 years old, in 1955, I believe, a polio epidemic occurred. We lived in Rochester, MN then.

I do remember going to the lobby of the of the Mayo Clinic, to get my vaccine on a sugar cube, along with all the other school children. Our doctor had said I should get it because there are 3 strains of polio and I was not protected against one of them. I believe it was the bulbar strain.

We could not go swimming and were restricted to the block we lived on.

A block away, in a family I babysat for, the mother and daughter contracted polio. The mother died and the daughter had to learn to walk with leg braces. I always remember the mother - she wore White Shoulders perfume. The father was a fellow (doctor) at the Mayo Clinic. He did not get polio, nor did I.

I never babysat for the girl again. She did well in walking braces but when I saw her, I would think, "That could have been me." I could never understand how polio could so dramatically impact my life twice.

Perhaps that's why I became a nurse.

My family has been in the State of Iowa since 1841. I was the only one born out of state, at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri during World War II. After graduating from the University of Iowa, I've lived in Iowa for 40+ years.