I had a delightful patient the other day with post-polio syndrome. She has vivid memories a being in an iron lung. She got polio when she was 1 1/2 years old, and was in an iron lung for 2 years. She remembers people dying, many of the people in iron lungs ended up dead. She recalls the big room full of other patients.
She had to have multiple surgeries to correct physical problems from atrophy while she was in the iron lung. It took her years to learn to walk. Her mother wasn't able to visit often because of other children in the house. She said she was paralyzed and knew nothing else, so doesn't feel like she was traumatized by something that sounds so horrible and surreal to all of us.
It's obvious that the nurses and caregivers did a nurturing job with her, because she was obviously a well adjusted lady, with a marvelous intellect. She went on to marry, have one daughter, divorce, and have a dynamic career.
'Coincidentally', polio thankfully disappeared shortly after the vaccination the population on a large scale.
llg - I remember standing in line for the sugar cubes, too. And 1961ish sounds right.
When one remembers that FDR was a post polio survivor, it is a stark contrasting reminder to watch DJT on the golf course. As I recall, FDR was RARELY photographed standing. It's amazing to realize how far healthcare has progressed in some areas.
But then also, when HC science/technology has advanced, it must be incumbent upon folk to embrace it.
For anyone interested, Wikipedia has an interesting entry of the early polio vax.
It's actually now believed in many quarters that FDR suffered Guillain-Barre, not polio.
Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.
I remember standing in line to get my sugar cube Polio vaccine (live virus) at High school near my grandmothers home - I was 6 in 1961. Other than tetorifice, it was the only vaccine I received as a child till the flu vaccine as young adult.
What a sugar cube can teach us as we develop a coronavirus vaccine
I remember standing in line to get my sugar cube Polio vaccine (live virus) at High school near my grandmothers home - I was 6 in 1961. Other than tetorifice, it was the only vaccine I received as a child till the flu vaccine as young adult.
What a sugar cube can teach us as we develop a coronavirus vaccine
Interesting read. We are exactly the same age so our experience of the sugar cube is the same. ?
I don't remember getting other vaccines (except smallpox and BCG) because I had had mumps, measles and rubella, that's what happened in the 1950's and 60's. Interestingly when I started nurse training in the 1980's I had to have a vaccination against rubella even though I told them I had had the disease and I promised not to get pregnant.?
In UK vaccines were seen as mandatory, you really needed a good excuse not to give your children them and I don't recall any parent refusing vaccines until that idiot and charlatan Wakefield came along. (Sorry, don't want to turn this into a discussion on antivaxxers.)
That is pretty much the Google search I did for calipers. really takes me back to my boyhood.?
Emergent, RN
4,307 Posts
It's actually now believed in many quarters that FDR suffered Guillain-Barre, not polio.