An Unwelcome Comeback

I read recently that, in 1951, there were over 28,000 reported cases of polio in the United States. By 1952, cases had climbed to over 57,000. Fortunately, the polio incidence plummeted after the Salk vaccine was introduced, falling to under 1,000 cases by 1962. Then a few years ago, in 2022, the virus resurfaced in wastewater samples in Rockland, Orange, and Nassau Counties, and New York City. I remember it all.

            It was the summer of 1951. I was 12. Playgrounds, beaches, pools, movie theaters, and churches were closed. My uncle, stopping for gas, wouldn’t fill up his deflated tires, fearing he’d bring home air containing the infectious virus. That spring, my father had been hospitalized with TB and the thought of me, her only child, getting polio and needing to be hospitalized almost drove my mother mad.

Polio caused flu like symptoms, mostly in children, such as sore throat, fever, headache and fatigue. But, in some cases, it could lead to meningitis and, even worse, paralysis of the muscles in limbs, the chest or throat. The only way doctors were able to treat and help save those who suffered from paralysis was by placing them in an iron lung, a large device looking much like a glass coffin, that enabled them to move, breathe or swallow while being treated. It was an unforgettable image.

I was fortunate. My biggest regret was that I wasn’t able to go to the pool or the movies, or spend two weeks during the summer with my cousins in Waltham, Massachusetts, a largely French-Canadian community where many of my mother and father’s siblings lived. They had migrated from Nova Scotia in their late teens and early twenties and had settled in Waltham. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the appeal of jobs at the Waltham Watch Company. Nor do I know who the first person in my family was to emigrate to the States. I also don’t know why my mother and father, who met in Waltham, decided to come to live in New York. But, that summer in 1951, I do recall sitting in our hot kitchen and hearing my mother call her four siblings in Waltham, saying that it would be too risky for us to spend two weeks visiting them that year. I was heart-broken, as were my seven cousins, with whom I had grown very close, and thought my mother was being overly-anxious and over-protective. But she stood her ground, and she was right.

That August, one of my cousins, Muriel, contracted polio in her right leg. She didn’t have to be hospitalized or put in an iron lung, but she was bedridden at home for over a year in a cast from ankle to neck. She went through hell as doctors and physical therapists looked for ways to stretch her right leg so it would match the length of her left. Their contraptions worked, but Muriel’s right foot remained deformed and left her with a lifelong limp. Muriel never let the limp get in her way. She biked, skated, dated, danced, got married, and had three kids. She died two years ago at 85. Her long active life was due, no doubt, to her determination not to let polio restrict her from anything she wanted to do. But Muriel paid a price. She could never assume she’d be accepted like anyone else, unless she acted like everyone else. “I always have to prove myself,” she told me, “or I’ll be excluded.”

There’s still no cure for polio, but in 1952, Dr. Jonas Salk, an American physician and medical researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, conducted mass testing of a vaccine he had developed which had the promise of being the first safe and effective vaccine for polio. Based on the successful results, it was released for use in 1955. Hundreds of thousands of people got the vaccine—three shots per person were required— and the incidence of polio fell dramatically. Even at my young age, I considered Salk a hero, as did most Americans. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

For me, the reemergence of polio in 2022 was a nightmare. I got all the vaccinations years ago and my doctor says, “You’re good; don’t worry.”

But I do. And I always will.