"Big Changes": Marcia Sliverman's battle with polio
It was a weird sensation. My throat was slightly sore and I had a mild headache. Every time my body was jarred --- such as when I took a step walking or bounced in the saddle as I rode horseback, it felt as though knives raced down my spine, from the base of my skull to my buttocks. My fever rose and fell from as high as 104 F. to sub-normal. I tried to keep my condition secret I was at summer camp and having, quite literally, the best time of my life.
Finally, after about a week, my legs stopped working. They were never completely paralyzed, but I could not walk. The head of the camp moved me from a cabin with younger children, into her house --- where my friends, fellow junior counselors, were allowed to visit me. I was taken to a doctor in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He examined me and stated I had a respiratory infection.
I looked him in the eye. “You know,” I said, “I may be only 15, but I’ve had almost every respiratory infection in the book --- including pleurisy, but none of them ever affected my ability to walk!”
He did not reply, and I returned to camp and the owner’s house where I stayed until camp was over for the summer.
I went back to Chicago and my father’s home. He remarked that I seemed pale and weak. Nothing was done. My stepmother insisted I had a slight virus infection --- and I should return to boarding school, as scheduled, in two weeks.
A day or two after my return home from camp, my father took me to a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. He had a box right behind first base. On the way to our seats, my legs gave way. I could neither get up nor walk. My father rushed me to the office of our family doctor, Sol Sugar. Within two hours, I was examined by a neurologist, Dr. David Kaplan, and admitted to Mercy Hospital, where I remained for the next eight weeks. Diagnosis: poliomyelitis. It was late August 1947.
Mercy Hospital was a Catholic hospital on Chicago’s south side. My room --- a single --- was large but stark. The walls were painted pea green, the upper half of the walls lighter than the lower. A wooden crucifix hung high above my bed, and a curtainless window did nothing to brighten anything.
The nurses were all nuns dressed in spotless white habits. They were efficient, patient, professional, and gentle as they performed their caring tasks. Each wore a serene, almost angelic expression, which reminded me of Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”
Twice a day a therapist entered my room with what looked like an old-fashioned washing machine, wringers attached, made of steel. Twice each day, heavy blanket-thick squares of wool were fished from the boiling hot water, put through the wringer, and tightly wrapped around my legs, my arms, my back, my abdomen. The heat was beyond endurance. I tried reverse psychology on myself, crying out, “It’s cold, it’s cold.” Nothing worked. The packs remained boiling hot.
An outer metallic wrap was placed over the wool to keep the heat --- and these hot packs were left on for over an hour, until they cooled. Soaking in a hot tub followed the hot packs, and then brief but gentle physical therapy. I could not over-use my muscles --- no walking allowed. This was the famous Sister Kenny treatment for polio, the best and only widely accepted treatment available at that time.
Did it work? There is still controversy. Would I have recovered as well without having submitted to the torture of hot packs? You can’t prove a negative. I was left with some residuals --- as were hundreds of thousands of others. I thank God for today’s vaccines, so that my children and others are protected from this menace.