Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio

5: Hot Packs

On my first day in the new room, I grumped to Dr. Bevis that the worst part about being paralyzed was that I couldn't paint my toenails. What good, I asked, was a life without painted toenails?

I don't know what made me say such thing, since I had never painted my toenails before I got sick. Maybe I just wanted handsome Dr. Bevis to notice me.

The next day, Dr. Bevis marched into my room and whisked the covers off my feet. Without saying a word, he took a bottle of bright red nail polish out of his pocket. I was astonished.

"Where did you get nail polish?" I asked

"I bought it."

"Why?"

"My favourite patient says life is no good without painted toenails." He sat beside me and painted each of my toenails.

I felt like a princess. He had bought nail polish just for me. I was his favorite patient! Instantly, I developed a serious crush on Dr. Bevis.

When he finished, he said, "Now I want you to do something for me."

At that moment, I would have flung myself off the Golden Gate Bridge if he had asked me to.

"What do you want?" I asked, wondering what I could do for him in my condition.

"I want you to get well. Someday, I want to watch you walk." He looked directly into my eyes. "Will you do that for me?"

"Yes."

"Good," he said. "It would make me very happy."

I promised him, and myself, that I would do it. Somehow, some way, I would get well. I would walk for this man who had painted my toenails. For days I insisted that the nurses let my feet stick out from under the blankets so I could admire my beautiful toenails.

Dr. Bevis's visits quickly became the highlights of every day. I tried to remember every knock, knock joke I'll ever heard so that I would have something to tell him. I wanted to make him laugh, and I also hoped to make him stay in my room longer.

When I couldn't remember any more knock, knock jokes, I began to make them up. I spent hours thinking of puns and figuring ways to use them. My favourite was was:

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Wendy."

"Wendy who?"

"Wendy toenails are painted, de patient gets well."

Dr. Bevis groaned, but I could tell he liked it. Tommy liked it, too.

I asked my parent for a radio because I missed hearing my favourite program, the "Lone Ranger." They bought a small portable radio, and at six-thirty that night. I asked one of the nurses to tune in the "Lone Ranger" for me. As soon as the familiar theme song began, Tommy let out a whoop of glee.

"Oh, boy!" He cried. "We get to hear the " Lone Ranger'!" He said he used go listen to every broadcast before he got sick.

The burse placed the radio between my bed and Tommy's iron lung so we could both hear. When our hero called to his horse, "Hi-yo, Silver! Awa-a-a-ay!" Tommy and I yelled, too. From then on, I called Tommy Tonto, the name of the Lone Ranger's companion, and he called me kemo sabe, which means faithful friend. We sometimes listened to music, too, or the "Archie Andrews" show, but we could hardly wait for six-thirty on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so we could hear the "Lone Ranger. It felt good to have something to look forward to again.

We could not look forward to a fast recovery, for there was no medicine for polio. The doctors hoped to minimize its effects, however, with the Sister Kenny treatments. These treatments, named for Sister Elizabeth Kenny, the Australian nurse who first used them. Consisted of two parts. The first was hot packs, and I had begun getting these twice a,day in isolation, as soon as my fever broke.

For this part of the treatment, I lay on my stomach, dressed only in underpants. Because my shoulder muscles were so weak, a rolled-up towel was put under each shoulder to keep them from becoming too rounded.

Then a nurse wheeled s big metal tank filled with streaming water up to my bed. The wheels squeaked and rattled across the floor as she approached, sounding like a freight train approaching its station. She out large gray wooden cloths in the hot water and then lifted them out with tongs so she wouldn't burn her fingers. She flattened the cloths in a wringer attached to the side of the rank, removing most of the moisture. The steak from the cloths filled my nostrils; I grew to dread the smell of we're wool.

As the hot cloths came out of the wringer, the nurse laid them across my bare back and the backs of my legs and arms.

The first time I had a hot packs treatment, I thought the nurse had made a mistakeand hearws the water too high. I screamed and cried, even though the nurse assured me that I wasn't being scalded. She said the water had to be that hot to help me.

After a few minutes, as the hot packs began to cool, they felt good because the warm, moist heat helped my muscles to relarelax.

When the cloths cooled to lukewarm, they were removed, and a fresh match of hot packs was laid across my back, arms, and legs. This went on for an hour, with the nursetsking the streaming cloths from the jot water, wringing them oig, and plunking them on my bare skin.

Each time a cool clofj was removed, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the first searing moments of the next hot one. The backs of mh thighs were particularly tender, and every time a hot pack was laid there, I was sure my skin was being blistered smd burned.

On my second day of treatment. I asked, "How many more times do I have go get hit packs?" I thought the hot packs were like medicine-take two times a day for seven days, and then it would be over.

"Oh, the hot packs continue as long as you're here," tbr nurse said as she plucked another streaming cloth from the boiling water.

That could be weeks, I thought. Months, even.

"Of course," she continued, "hot packs are only one part of the Kenny treatment. As soon as you're out of isolation, you'll get the second part."