Bode, Marilyn - Dallas County

General Comments:

I do not remember the symptoms that led to my parents taking me to Dr. Osborn, our family doctor in Dexter, in early October, 1952. They have since told me that I had some flu symptoms a few days before and then I woke up with a stiff neck. When they took me to the doctor, he told them to take me to Des Moines to the hospital. I do remember the spinal tap that the doctors there performed; I was curled on my side in a kind of fetal position while they poked me in the back. My parents say that I screamed and cried while they waited helplessly for the diagnosis they feared most: polio.

I was admitted to Blank Children's Hospital and placed in a ward with other polio patients. I remember a room crowded with beds. I was in a crib with only enough space between my bed and the next one for a nurse to squeeze through. That first ward was for those of us, and it seems like there were hundreds, who were quarantined. They told me that anything my parents gave me for me to read or play with in that ward would have to stay behind when I left. Parents couldn't come visit their children who were quarantined so they came to the outside window and looked in and waved. I remember that both parents and children were crying. I seem to remember that my parents showed me a doll that they would send in to me but I didn't want it if it meant leaving it behind. I also have some memory of reading the book Heidi while I was in the hospital but at seven years old, I wouldn't have had many reading skills yet. It is funny how the memory of the story with Heidi, her grandfather, and the goats is so vivid.

Perhaps ten days or so later I was moved out of the quarantine ward to another ward for polio patients, all girls, I think. Although there were several beds in the room, it was more spacious and I was in a regular hospital bed, not a crib. I remember that the walls were painted with animal characters or cartoon characters; surely Disney hadn't penetrated that market yet.

I don't know a lot about polio but from what I have read since then I've learned that the accepted treatment to keep muscles stretched and limber was to wrap the arms and legs with wet hot packs. I remember that well. The nurses and volunteers brought strips of steaming wool, it looked like pieces of Army blankets, and wrapped them around our legs and arms, then covered them with plastic. After the wool cooled, they removed them and brought replacements. It seems to me that they did this all day while we lay on our backs in bed.

My parents lived about 40 miles west of Des Moines where they farmed. This was in October so I'm sure my father was harvesting. My mother came to Des Moines and lived with her aunt, Arle Snyder, so that she could come to the hospital every day as a volunteer. My brother was only four so I assume that my grandparents or aunts and uncles helped to take care of him. I do remember being glad that my mother was there to take care of me. She worked with the other volunteers to put the hot packs on our thin limbs.

I have a vivid memory of being burned. According to my mother, the procedure was to take the hot wool out of scalding water and wring the water out. One volunteer apparently didn't wring enough water out and when she placed the hot wool on my leg, it burned me. I remember the giant blisters on my thigh. No more hot packs on that leg. I did have faint scars on my thigh for years after that.

One day a nurse asked me if I was ready for physical therapy. I had no idea what those words meant. I was taken to a room with a huge tub of water, maybe something like a hot tub. I soaked in the water for awhile and then was taken to a bench where a therapist started exercising my limbs. I had lost the use of my left arm so while all of the other exercises were do-able - bending and raising my legs and other arm - my left arm wouldn't work. My mother accompanied me to physical therapy and learned what the exercises were that could possibly bring my arm back to usefulness. The doctors were pessimistic about my arm and told my parents that I would probably need surgery to connect different nerves and muscles for it to work again. My doctor was Dr. Throckmorton. I don't remember him but my parents remember that I said he would be a good grandpa.

Our neighbor boy was in Blank Children's Hospital at the same time that I was there. One day my mother took me in a wheel chair to see him. He was in an iron lung. I remember seeing his head sticking out of this huge, shiny machine. He was three years older than I was but we had been playmates. Tragically, he died in that machine.

The hospital was so overwhelmed with polio patients that they allowed my parents to take me home and work on the exercises there. I had been in the hospital for three weeks or so and was no longer contagious. Part of the regimen was for me to take soaking baths and we didn't have indoor plumbing or a bathtub. My parents borrowed a portable bathtub from our neighbors. It was made of canvas stretched over a frame. I think my mother spent much of each day heating water on the cook stove, putting me to soak in the tub, and then working with me on my exercises.

There is a diagram that the physical therapists made for her about the exercises. I remember that I was to simply raise my left arm out from the side of my body, up to shoulder level. I tried to lift my shoulder to help my arm but Mom pressed down on my shoulder to force me to use different muscles to raise my arm. We repeated that several times a day as well as keeping my other limbs flexible with bending and stretching exercises. At regular intervals we went to Des Moines to the physical therapist to check my progress. Then he would give Mom some new exercises. Eventually, I could raise my arm and then there was a progression of small sandbags that I held or were perhaps attached to my wrists and I had to raise my arm with first a small sandbag and later, heavier ones. I seem to remember that the sandbags were made of blue and white striped ticking. Mom was unrelenting; no amount of whining on my part got me out of doing my exercises. Sometimes we were both crying during our sessions but we kept going. There were floor exercises, as well. Mom did those with me and we sat on the floor with our legs extended in front of us working to touch our toes. I became very flexible and could eventually touch my forehead to my knees.

During that fall and early winter, I was, of course, missing school. Mom got my assignments from school and I worked on some worksheets at home. I was in second grade and there was some rule about the number of days of school that I could miss and still pass the second grade. So sometime that winter I started back to school. I don't know if I went full time but I do remember showing off my flexibility to my classmates, sitting on the floor doing my exercises. I don't think it was long before we were able to put polio and physical therapy behind us.