Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio

4: "You Can't Burn My Bear!"

The next day I swallowed orange juice and broth. Soon I could eat small amounts of sift food such as oatmeal, tapioca pudding, and a gelatin dessert. My chart still said NO MILK, but any time I asked for a milkshake, I got one.

Within days, I could swallow naturally, without thinking about it, and nothing I drank came back through my nose.

The deep, aching pain went away, and the muscle spasms stopped. It was easier to get my breath, too. The doctors decided to take me out of the tent for awhile, to see how long I could breathe on my own. My favourite doctor, a young blonde intern named Dr. Bevis, pulled back the plastic tent. I could see around me without everything looking foggy.

Someone turned the crank at the foot of my bed, and the upper half of the bed raised up, putting me in a semi-sitting position. The change felt wonderful.

"Breathe easy," Dr. Bevis said. "Don't take great gulps of air. Relax. Pretend you're going to sleep."

I closed my eyes. Because my chest muscles were so weak, my stomach, rather than my diaphragm, rose and fell as I inhaled and exhaled. Each time my lungs filled with air, my brain filled with excitement. I could breathe without the oxygen tent!

"You're doing great," Dr. Bevis said. "Let's try it on your own. We'll keep the oxygen tent here, in case you need it."

I opened my ryes and grinned at him. "I won't need it," I said.

Later that afternoon, I watched joyfully as the iron lung was rolled out of my room. The next day, the oxygen tent was removed. I had won a major victory; I could breathe by myself.

A nurse gave me more good news: I was moving out of isolation.

"Dies that mean I'm not contagious anymore?" I asked.

"That's right. Your parents won't have to put on gowns, masks, and gloves before they visit you." Above her mask, her eyes smiled at me. "And neither will I," she added.

She opened a large bag and began dropping get-well cards into it. I had received dozens of cards and small gifts from family and friends. I had a faint memory of Mother and Dad holding up cards for me to look at through the oxygen tent and telling me who had sent them, but I had been too sick to pay attention.

The window ledge and the bedside table were crowded with cards, stuffed animals, books, and a flowering plant.

As I watched the nurse put s stuffed cat into her bag, I assumed she was moving my belongings to my new ward.

"This afternoon I'm going to have Mother read all my cards to me," I said. *I was so sick when they came that I don't remember who sent them."

"You can't take cards to your new room," she said.

"Why not? They're mine."

"Anything you had in this room gets burned," she said. Humming cheerfully, she dropped my new books into the bag.

"Burned?" I yelped. "You're going to burn my books? I haven't read them yet. I don't even know the titles."

She fished one of the books out of the bag and read the cover aloud: "Annie of Green Gables."

"I want to read that one. I've heard it's really good."

"I'm sorry," she said. "We have to do this. It's the only way to be sure the virus doesn't spread." Back into the bag went Annie of Green Gables, followed by the plant and a box of candy.

"Those are mine!" I shouted, feeling like a two-year-old whose toys were being snatched by a bully. "You can't do that!" I longed to leap from the bed and grab what was rightfully mine out of the nurse's hands.

Just then Mother arrived I told her what was happening, certain she would make that unfair nurse give me back my belongings.

To my surprise, Mother took the nurse's side. "This has to be done Peg. The hospital can't let something contagious leave this room."

"But..."

She shook her head firmly, cutting off my protests.

"Dad and I knew when we brought your mail to you that this would happen. The nurse told us. We brought it anyway because we hoped that seeing the cards and gifts would help you feel better when you were so sick."

The nurse picked up the teddy bear that Art has sent me.

"Not my bear!" I cried. "You can't burn my bear!"

"I'm sorry," said the nurse as she dropped Teddy into the bag. She sealed the bag with tape, and with gloved hands carried it out if the room.

The teddy bear that has sustained me through the worst week of my life was about to be cremated. I felt like I was murdering my only friend.

"You wouldn't want someone else to get polio just because you kept your teddy bear, would you?" Mother said.

"No," I said. I knew she and the nurse were right, but I still didn't Luke it one bit. I sulked until I learned that moving out of isolation meant that I could finally wear my own pajamas instead of hospital gown.

A different bed was wheeled in. After I was lifted onto it, a nurse stripped the sheets SBD blankets off of the old bed and put them in a bag.

"Where do you take the bed, to burn it?" I asked.

"The beds don't get burned. They get sterilized."

"Why couldn't my bear be sterilized? Why do you have to burn him?"

She didn't answer.

I was rolled down the hallway to my new room, which I shared with a little boy in an iron lung.   Tommy, and he was eight.

All I could see of Tommy was his head, which stuck out from one end of the iron lung and rested on a canvas strap, much like a small hammock. A mirror over his head allowed him a limited range of vision, but he was unable to see me.

I was glad to have someone besides adults to talk to, but I wished Tommy were closer to my age, and I wished he were a girl. Since I was not able to get out of bed, I had to use a bedpan. I didn't want to do so with a boy in the room.

Tommy told me that lots of people were able to breathe by themselves after being in an iron lung for many months. He was sure this would happen to him, too.

Tommy's iron lung made a soft swoosh,  swoosh noise as it helped him to breathe. I found the sound soothing and went to sleep that night pretending I was in a log cabin in a lake, listening to waves lapping the shore.

In the morning I lay quietly, trying to match my breathing to the rhythmic swooshing of the iron lung. As I did, I welcomed each breath I took, grateful that it could enter my lungs without assistance.