Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio

3: An Oxygen Tent and a Chocolate Milkshake

Days and nights blurred together.

My parents came in, wearing hospital gowns, gloves and masks.

As they stood beside my bed, I saw fear in their eyes. I realized they were allowed into the isolation ward now, when they had not been earlier, because I was so sick that the doctors weren't sure if I would die.

I was glad to have them there, though they were not allowed to touch me and could stay only a few minutes. Always, in the past, they had made everything all right for me. I felt safer knowing they were in the room.

I still had a fever. I ached all over, my throat hurt, and I couldn't shift position in bed without help. Periodically, a nurse turned me from my side to my back and, later, to the other side. That eased the pain temporarily, but it always came back.

"We're going to put you in an oxygen tent," the doctor said. It was the same doctor who had told me about bulbar polio. Was it the same day? The same week? I didn't know if I had slept five minutes or a month.

"We hope the oxygen will keep you breathing on your own," he continued. "If not, a respirator will help you."

I looked where he pointed, and a wave if horror poured over me as I realized respirator was another name for what was popularly called an iron lung.

I had seen pictures of people in iron lungs. The tube shaped machine completely enclosed the patient's body. Only the head stuck out. Bellows pumped air in and out, causing the patient's lung to expand and contract. Small doors and portholes on the sides of the iron lung allowed the nurses to put their hands in to bathe the patients and help with toileting. Portions of the doors were clear plastic so the nurses could see what they were doing.

Some patients stayed in iron lungs for the rest of their lives, never again breathing by themselves. I thought it would be like being put in a coffin while you were still alive.

Now an iron lung loomed beside my bed, hoses hanging like tentacles—a gray octopus ready to swallow me at any moment.

As I imagined my future in an iron lung, tears of despair rolled down my cheeks. I could not raise my hand to wipe them away, and they ran into my ears.

Until I got polio, I had led a carefree life. My brother, Art, is six years older than I; my parents had longed for a baby girl, and my birth was cause for celebration. Throughout my childhood, I was dearly loved, and I knew it.

My earliest memories are of swinging, with lilacs in bloom on both sides of my swing—flying high past the purple blossoms, surrounded by the scent; of pushing Raggedy Ann and Marilyn, my favourite dolls, in my doll buggy; of sitting on a picnic bench with my mother's relatives around me, all of them singing,  "Sleep, Kentucky Babe" or  "You Are My Sunshine."

Nothing in these experiences had prepared me for the words "The patient is paralyzed from neck down" or the sight of an iron lung standing beside my hospital bed.

The oxygen tent was a sheet of plastic that was draped over me from my waist to the back of my head.

Inside the plastic, oxygen was released for me to breathe.
A frame kept the plastic three feet above my head and chest while the four sides hung down to touch my bed. Looking through it was like viewing the room through a foggy windshield.

My parents brought me a teddy bear from Art, who was a freshman at Carleton College. They put the little bear inside the oxygen tent.

"The oxygen tent is just what you need," Mother said, her cheerfulness sounding forced. "It will make it easier yo breathe, and you'll soon feel better."