Immunizations Matter
Submitted by Carol Lindsay MSN, RN
Tags: care children family health mother
These are my mother's words, Patricia Jeanne Warehime Thomas (August 7, 1927 – September 5, 2015).
She told me this story and recorded it in a video. I later transcribed it and arranged it chronologically.
A Child of the Depression
When I was eight, after I had my tonsils out, I was sent to live with my grandparents. It was the Great Depression, and there was no money to keep the city's schools open.
I was already a year behind, so I went there and lived with my grandparents for a year. That meant I didn't live at home during second grade.
We went back to Ashtabula, Ohio, during the summer. My mother and Aunt Lily kept us away from all public places all summer because of polio.
In August, Mom decided she would take my brother Ed and me back to Ohio again, away from the city. Uncle George drove us down.
The First Signs
The day we got back to the farm, my cousins wanted me to come down to the orchard. We were standing at the top of a hill, and the apple orchard was below us.
The kids said, "Come on down, let's pick apples." But I felt bad. I felt like I was going to roll down the hill.
Then we went to supper, and I could hardly lift my arm. I went to bed. I was sleeping on a pallet on the floor with my cousin Margaret.
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I had a box of Cracker Jacks, and I asked my cousin what the prize was in her box.
The Diagnosis
My mother and aunt came into the room. They didn't have running water, but Grandma gave me a dipper full of ice-cold water, and that water tasted so good.
They picked me up off the floor and put me in my grandmother's featherbed. It felt like a cloud.
They took me to a local doctor. He thought maybe I had typhoid. They gave me some awful orange medicine. I still hate the color orange.
The medicine they made me drink left me thirsty. "Maybe I had this, that, or the other," they said. "You can take her back home."
They put me in the car and drove me back 200 miles to Ashtabula. At home, I had on a little pink one-piece undergarment with button flaps on the back.
That's what I was wearing when my mother and Aunt Lily said, "You have to walk to the doctor."
We tried to walk, but I was too sick, so we had to take a streetcar. I got to the doctor's office, lay on the table, and he did a spinal tap.
Then he said, "She's got polio. Take her home and put her feet above her head, and I don't want to see her again."
He refused to see me again because he didn't want to catch anything. He didn't want to touch polio patients. We went back home.
Quarantine
The city health department came out and put a sign on the door that read "QUARANTINED—POLIOMYELITIS," and nobody could come in or go out.
My Uncle Morris and Aunt Margaret came and stayed in the house to take care of my brother Ed. Uncle George and Aunt Nellie stayed close by at Aunt Lily's house and would come and bring food and leave it outside.
A Mother's Fight
Mother kept me alive by herself. She said she did what God told her to do. My days and nights ran together, and I knew no time.
She was there night and day because I was drawn up into a ball. She would rub warm olive oil into my arms and legs and pull them straight. I would scream, and she did other unpleasant things to keep me alive.
My bowels and everything inside me stopped working. She did everything to take care of me.
This went from August until the end of October.
One Wednesday evening, while I was sick, Uncle George took my mother to a prayer meeting at a church. They went in and were seated, and the pianist stopped playing, turned to the congregation, and said, "Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Mother asked Uncle George why she said that. He said, "Said what?" She repeated it, and he said, "Only you heard it. She was speaking in tongues."
That gave her the strength to keep on, even when she considered suicide.
My brother Ed asked her if there would be angels when she left me alone in the hospital.
The Shriners
If a family had no money, there was no medical attention. You either lived or you died. My family did everything, and I lived.
By the end of October, I was able to sit in a chair.
That's when the Shriners came in, because we had no money. On October 29, 1935, the Shriners took me to Elyria Memorial Hospital in Ohio. That's what Shriners Hospital did.
By then, the disease was over, but I was left with paralysis.
Shriners took care of crippled children with polio. I was there from October until Easter. My mother lived three hundred miles away.
Once or twice a month, she could come to visit.
Alone in the Hospital
The first night, they put me in a big crib at the hospital. I didn't know how to use a call light to call the nurse when I needed to use the bathroom. Luckily, a nurse came by.
Once again, I was a stranger by myself.
Once a day, I did physical therapy exercises with a therapist on a table. I had a heavy metal brace on my arm. I didn't like the food, and it was hard to eat.
One time in the hospital, I fell out of bed. Crash. They came in and thought it was a girl in a big body cast. They looked at me and said, "Oh—it's you." I just had braces on my arm and leg.
When Christmas came, we got lots of presents, but it wasn't my mother's time to visit. That night, a nurse caught me crying and asked why.
I couldn't say it was because I wanted my mother, so I told her it was because I didn't get a doll. She went and found me a doll.
They Burned It All
I left on Easter Sunday. I left everything I had gotten there, including the Mickey Mouse watch my mother got me for Christmas. She worked for 50 cents a week and spent everything she had on that watch. Everything.
They came and got me. They just took me. Everything I had was left at the hospital, including my Mickey Mouse watch, all my books, my clothes, and my doll.
They burned it all.
Coming Home
When I got back from the hospital, it was too late to go back to school, so I was two years behind. I had a left arm brace, and I was still wearing a long brace on my right leg.
I was standing in front of my house when a little boy across the street taunted me about my brace. I picked up a stone, threw it at him, and hit him. He cried and said he was going to tell his mother. It scared me so bad.
I went into the house and did something I'd never done before. I read a little book Grandma Warehime had sent me for my birthday, called Among the Hills with Ellie, from cover to cover. I still have that book.
Luckily, I hadn't gotten it before I went to the hospital, because if I had taken that book, it would have been burned.
One book I remember and wish I could find—I don't know the name—was about some children who sailed off in a ship they had made from a box and had many adventures.
One part stayed with me. They came to a deep wood, and the harder they struggled, the worse it became. When they finally turned around and walked the other way, they found it was behind them.
I wondered about that then. I understand it now.
Too often, we struggle with things that are better left behind.
About the Author: Carol Lindsay is the daughter of Patricia Jeanne Warehime Thomas. This article was transcribed from a video recording in which Patricia told the story of her childhood battle with polio in 1935. Patricia passed away on September 5, 2015, at the age of 88. Carol submitted this piece to preserve her mother's story and to remind readers why immunizations and public health measures remain essential today.