One warm late May evening in 1955 my parents told us we were going for ice cream at Hiller’s Drugstore. I had my suspicions. There were, I think, six of what would grow to be eight kids in the family at that point and we seldom, if ever, got taken out for anything all together at one time. And why now? It was not an occasion, nothing to celebrate, just a weeknight and a school night at that. Something was up.
Hiller’s was one of two drugstores that were nearby. Finkelman’s Drugs was at Lotus and Madison and was the more “fun” drugstore, with comic books and candy for sale and a big soda fountain. Hiller’s, the more proper drug store, sat on the corner two blocks east at Lockwood and Madison and was below a number of medical doctors’ offices on the second floor. Hiller’s only departure from serious medicine was a little ice cream cooler, usually manned by a teenage employee with a scoop.
So we walked to the corner and it was there we saw the line outside Hiller’s. Only the line didn’t lead into the store; it led into the doorway of the stairwell leading up to the second floor, where our family doctor, Dr. Nash, had his office. Dr. Nash was a gruff old World War II surgeon with a blunt bedside manner. He had only three fingers on one hand which had been caused, I was told, by his holding newborn babies up to a fluoroscope and had irradiated his fingers. Probably didn’t do too much good for the babies, either, and I think I might have been one of them. Like many doctors in these unenlightened times, he chain smoked.
My siblings and I began to walk a little slower, sensing danger, but unable to figure out what kind. My parents were alert to our sudden reluctance, and it was my mother who told us that we had to see the doctor for a quick minute or two, but that we would indeed get our reward after that.
So we took our place in the line and I noticed that it was all kids. The parents were merely escorts, or perhaps prison guards assigned to keep us from running. Whatever was going on up there was producing an occasional wail, muffled by closed doors. And kids were only going up the stairs; there was no one heading down to tell you what awaited you. They were being ushered out the back way.
My father broke it to us as we were distributed along the bottom six steps, with no way out. We each had to get a shot for something called polio. He told us it would save our lives and every kid in America was getting one, so we had better behave. At least we knew.
So we stood in line with all the other condemned, finally taking our individual turn in the office. A nurse told me to turn my head, rubbed my arm with alcohol, and gave me the shot, which I can still recall hurting. Needle technology has come a long way since then and most shots today are almost painless, but not so that year. I think I yelped, but then we all got our ice cream.
———————
At my age, I didn’t know that April 12th of that year was the day a nation learned that the polio vaccine worked. This was the day on which they broke the news that a giant, nationwide test involving Dr. Jonas Salk’s miraculous vaccine and some 440,000 kids proved to be over 90% effective. They announced it on the date of the death of polio’s most famous victim, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The year before that, over 58,000 other kids and young adults were diagnosed with polio. It was bad enough that families avoided beaches, movie theaters, parades, and other crowded events. How it got transmitted was unclear, but it attacked limbs, lungs, and other organs, and it could kill you. It was an epidemic and it brought fear into American households.
I can remember being scared of a few things when I was six years old, but nothing scared me more than the prospect of ending up in an “iron lung”, a sort of casket you lay in, but with your head sticking outside. The machine pushed on your chest to force polio-disabled lungs to draw in and exhale air. It seemed like a kid would be buried alive in that device, never to run and play again. It was one of my nightmares.
So we stood in line for our first polio shot, along with kids in lines across America, the immunization effort raised to an almost wartime emergency level by the medical authorities. Within a few years, polio went away and a nation and then most of the world got healthier.
——————-
I have watched with a grandparent’s sense of helplessness as first one, and then another of my grandsons was diagnosed with Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. I remember our disbelief at first, then the hospital classes we all attended to learn how to care for the condition. We took turns around the table sticking each other’s fingers to draw blood for glucose levels. We practiced giving shots, thankfully with needles finer and less painful than the polio shot. We learned the language of Type 1: bolus, basal levels, carbs, insulin, and the like. We grew a little resentful of those who didn’t understand the condition, or whose parties featured food and drinks that did not acknowledge the condition. We grew more resentful of those who dismissed it as a minor issue, not worthy of much attention. We grew to hate diabetes itself and to be impatient for its cure.
And when I get too resentful of those people who, like us, never had to think about Type 1, I remember that twenty or more years ago my sister Mary Ann had to deal with this for her daughter in Ireland without any of the support network and much of the technology we enjoy now.
I marvel at the resiliency of my daughters and their husbands who have not only embraced the daily and nightly struggle of balancing glucose levels in the blood of their children, but have provided comfort and leadership to families of the recently diagnosed. Those parents don’t know at the outset the size and consistency of the burden, how it will take over and change their lives, but my daughters know it. The newly diagnosed families don’t realize that phrases like “spur of the moment” and “on a whim” have left their lives, to be replaced by words they and we never wanted to learn. They don’t know they have embarked on a daily treatment that is both science and art in its administration. And they are part of a rapidly growing club, because Type 1 is on the rise for reasons not entirely understood.
My daughters have become leaders and champions of this fight, teaching schools about snacks, fighting the rules brought on by ignorance and the reluctance of institutions to change, and leading the fundraising for a cure. I take a quiet pride in the courage and confidence my Matthew and Sean have shown as they grow and continue to adapt to this condition and as they move rapidly toward becoming their own caretakers. Smart, tough kids.
We raise the funds, we devour and share every article about possible breakthroughs for a cure and we stay abreast of the best new devices for monitoring. The technology helps, and the technology keeps getting better, but I pray for a day like that long ago day at Hiller’s Drugstore, when miracles appeared at the corner of my block. It happened once; it can happen again.
