Steinberg, Kathy - Butler County

Describe what you remember about the fear surrounding polio epidemics:

I came down with polio in September of 1954 when I was 4 years old. The week before I was climbing up on our shed and 24 wasps stung me all over my face and the poison stayed inside my body because my face did not swell up. My mom and dad thought that maybe this caused my polio.

Tell us what you remember of the impact of polio:

I remember waking up and not being able to bend my chin down to my chest so my mom took me to the doctor. My mom and dad were really scared when the doctor told them that I had polio and they had to take me to the University of Iowa hospital. I got to take my teddy bear with me. When we got there the nurse took me into a little room (they wouldn't let my folks come with me) and she got out a huge needle and made me bend over and stuck it in my back. I remember screaming and screaming and they still wouldn't let my mom and dad in. Then they took me to a hospital room and when my folks came to see me they had to wear white gowns and masks over their mouths. I had a habit of getting out of my bed and running down the hall so they tied a net over my bed and that still wouldn't keep me in so they taped the net on. I remember that I got really bad and they said I was paralyzed on my left side. I was in the hospital for 14 days. When I left the hospital they wouldn't let me take my teddy bear but the money I got they put through a special solution and I got to bring that home. I cried all the way home (we lived in Muscatine at the time) so my dad went out and bought me a new teddy bear and I still have teddy to this day.

I will never forget my Grandma Moore because if it wasn't for her I would have been crippled all my life. She exercised my legs and arms everyday and would put me in the bathtub and swirled the water like a whirlpool.

The effects on me was I would be running and fall down and the kids at school would laugh and make fun of me and I would run the 8 blocks home crying. I was only 5 at the time and in kindergarten and that was really hard. My left side of my face is still different from my right because I can't wrinkle up my left side of my mouth and my left eye twitches but I feel I am one of the luckier ones that survived that awful disease. I get tired easily and I have a lot of aches and pains I can't explain. Every time I get sick it seems to end up on my left side and I get burning spots on my body that may last 15 minutes or a couple of days but you take the good with the bad because I guess there is no cure for post-polio.

Describe the reaction of your family and others you knew to the development of the vaccine:

I got my first dose of the vaccine at Musserville grade school (after I had polio) and they lined us up and we went through the line and they squeezed the vaccine in our mouths. I remember feeling like they were herding us through like cattle.

General Comments:

That time in my life wasn't easy being a 4-year-old child but I came out it luckier then most because my family did everything they could for me. I am very glad that I could walk again and do most everything that other children could.