Polio

‘First the word, then the plant, lastly the knife.’  Aesculapius of Thassaly, c. 1200 B.C., considered to be the first surgeon. I think word should probably be capitalized, as in Word, probably from the Greek logos, as in, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’

            I had polio once. Not many people know that. Even I have forgotten pretty much about it but I’ve had to really dredge around for stories for Jane. Surprisingly, I keep finding them, all buried beneath a muck of later happenings. Anyway, it all started because I got pissed off. Pissed off at my parents for sending me to Boy Scout camp in the Adirondacks instead of the lovely and expensive summer camp I had gone to in Maine for two summers. The kids who went to THAT camp were all wealthy. A couple of the Rockefeller kids went there. I had a few bathroom problems at camp in Maine. It wasn’t until thirty years later I ever figured out what the heck that was all about.

Other than the bathroom problems I did spectacularly well at camp. I was voted the best camper of my age group each summer I attended. No one ever said anything to me about that except the other kids at the camp who knew what an honor it was. They, all of them, were not only rich, but also smart. I am sure many of them are lawyers, doctors and magnates of all kinds now as are my many classmates from Dartmouth. I got to be the best camper because I was so all around competent, especially at canoeing, camping and shooting. I was the only one who didn’t have a counselor in my canoe with me on canoe trips, as I was such a strong paddler even though I had never been in a canoe before my first time at camp.

I recall when I was eleven we all took a big trip along the Maine coast and the weather began to come up so we paddled to an island with a house on it. The counselors broke into the house and put as many kids as they could inside. I set up my jungle hammock outside and climbed in. I set it up just like they said for rain but lowered the top way down so it completely covered me. It began raining in the night and the counselors came to get all the rest of the kids into the house because their bedding was all getting wet. And me, I was so sound asleep and dry they had to shake my hammock for minutes in the pouring rain to awaken me. I was totally dry and angry they made me get up and go into the house with all of them. I won lots of NRA awards for my shooting at camp also. I have been a gun nut all my life until recently.

        So here I am thirteen years old and bored stiff out of my mind and my parents figure they can’t afford to send me to Maine for camp for two months but instead send me to Boy Scout camp for one month with a bunch of nerds and black kids. I hated the Boy Scouts. I was a tenderfoot for 3 years in the Boy Scouts; me, the best 9 and 11 year old camper. As it turned out, it would have been a lot less expensive if my parents had sent me to Maine. I think I got polio from a black kid who had a real high fever. He was wandering around delirious and no one would pay any attention to him. The nurses didn’t like the black kids because they would all get hard ons whenever they would go to get shots or whatever at the infirmary. The doctor would take his little red rubber mallet and hit these guys right at the base of the hard on making it go down immediately. The doctor had to be in the infirmary all the time. Anyway, I took this kid by the arm and put him to bed and got him some water and made him feel comfortable, which he very much appreciated. I could see it in his eyes. I began to get a fever myself the next day but thought nothing of it. I returned home from camp a few days later and seemed to have a cold or something. I had been quite sickly as a child, colds, earaches, etc.

Soon though I began talking like Donald Duck. My mother made an appointment with our family doctor who immediately sent me over to an ear, eye, nose and throat specialist. This guy said I had polio. Ah, polio, schmolio. A big stupid ambulance came to the house a few days later and carted me away to the huge Westchester County (NY) hospital, called Grasslands, where a special polio ward was set up in what had been the solarium. The place was filled with kids. I loved it and I loved being out of the house. My condition deteriorated. I had bulbar polio, the kind that paralyzes your throat and goes down into your lungs and eventually your diaphragm, which when paralyzed puts you in an iron lung.

My paralysis progressed down my throat so that I had to use a suction tube to remove saliva from my mouth and eventually I wasn’t able to eat at all. Thank God nothing was forced upon me. Well, that’s not quite true. I was given a spinal tap so they could check my spinal fluids. The problem was they let a student nurse give me the tap and she played around with a needle in my back for at least fifteen minutes not getting any fluid while I was held forcibly in the fetal position by about 4 big nurses. Finally, the head nurse grabbed the needle and swiftly tapped my spine but I had nerve damage to my spine and a bad back that lasted for almost 30 years until I applied some very intense non-traditional healing remedies to my back, healing it totally. So, totally for a lark, and somewhat by chance, I spent one summer in the moving business when I was 50 years old. I moved 6 apartments and houses full of furniture and belongings with a Mexican guy I found. I was the one who lifted up the ends of the piano while they rolled the dolly underneath. My guy’s 10 year old son, Carlos, always came with us. They jokingly called him Carlos and called me Carlitos, the diminutive. What a panic. That was the name I had been called at home until I was about 6 or 7 and by some of my parent’s South American friends until I was well into my 20’s.

 This was the very end of the non-heroic period of medicine, right before doctors began to intervene severely in the progress of illnesses, killing many patients like me who needed to be sick and get well on our own.

‘First, do no harm.’  Hippocrates, precepts

I was not able to eat for about three weeks and my weight went from 175 down to 113 lb. I spent my 14^th birthday in the hospital. The new and radical treatment for polio was hot compresses. I was wrapped twice a day in what seemed to be pieces of Army blankets that had been steamed and heated. The nurses and this one doctor on crutches who had had polio himself would wrap me totally in these horrible scratchy woolens and then wrap all that in more blankets greatly raising my body temperature. I think what really worked though was the congregation at our local church praying for me. I was the only kid in the congregation and one of only 2 kids in town who had polio so the prayers were pretty concentrated. I had been an altar boy and crucifer at the church and the rest of the family was pretty involved too. I could feel everyone’s prayer, that’s how strong the energy was.

        After two weeks of treatment I began to get better. I had come in with one of the worst cases in the ward and here I was the first, and really only, one to respond well to treatment. I have a theory that the enforced fasting was crucial in my recovery. Back then prisoners from the county jail managed an extensive orchard and garden on the hospital grounds and I began to be able to down fresh peach milkshakes. I began participating in the surreptitious wheelchair races we kids began having. It was great as visitors, including, or maybe especially, parents, could only come a couple of times a week. I was the first one to go home. I cried when they told me I had to go; I wanted to stay in the hospital. I could never figure why everyone was so upset about this polio thing anyway. I had told everyone all along that I would be ice skating by wintertime. I simply ignored all of their patronizing glances and I could see that they had convinced themselves and my parents I had a long recovery ahead of me. I got back to school a month or so late for the 6^th grade. I was a minor celebrity for only about 2 days; you know how 14 year olds are. After a month or so I began to hate taking the school bus every morning with all those nerds so I began walking and hitchhiking to school, about 4 miles. I did it for the whole school year and the next year too. Of course, I was skating that winter; I ice skated the whole winter. No one ever messed around with me when I wanted something or wanted to go somewhere. They discovered the polio vaccine about six months later. I vowed to myself to never again get sick like this and to stop being sickly, as I had been all my life and also to not be sick to get back at my parents.

“But above all things my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.”  James 5:12

Having recovered, I stopped going to church and proceeded to my next illness, alcoholism, which lasted a lot longer than the polio. No hot compress cure there! 

        Unless I tell them, no one who knows me now notices the slight paralysis I have in my face; it shows when I’m tired sometimes. I’ve wondered in later years if perhaps I have residual effects from the polio. My psychic advisor always thought so, especially when I contracted Lyme’s disease at 45, some 30 years after having polio. It’s one of the dualities I live with, hyperactivity and paralysis. Everybody has them, dualities that is. It’s always much easier to see other people’s dualities than our own. Much.