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| GROWING UP WITH POLIO Portia's story |
| I was born on September 17, 1948, eleven months later as I was just beginning to walk, I became ill. I could not stand or sit by myself. Little did my parents know that the polio virus had been breathed into my mouth or nose and attacked part of my brain that controled motor functions and nerves from my left hip to my toes. Mom took me to see a Dr. Sargent who diagnosed an ear infection that would explain the dizziness he thought was the problem. A prescription was written for me but after several days I was not getting any better. I was taken to another doctor who examined me and could not get a response from my left leg when he used a reflex hammer. He diagnosed Polio. My mother (Irene Cloud) took me to the Harlan County Health Department to get help for me. The Health Department contacted the Shriners of Louisville, Ky. They arranged for a visit to the clinic at the Kozair Childrens Hospital in Louisville, Ky. The Shriners paid for our train and bus fair for the following ten years from Harlan, Ky to Kosair Hospital. At age 5 I had my first operation. This operation was to correct the inadiquate flow of blood in my left leg that was aflicted by polio. I think that I was fitted for special shoes with a brace for my left leg at this time. As you can see in the picture above, the brace came to just below my knee. This happened in 1953. This was the first of several operations at Kozair Hospital in Louisville. I remember being in a ward withf other children. When the lights were turned out there was a lot of crying and I was among them because I did not know where my mommy was. There was no explanations given to children when something this traumatic was occuring. Children were to be seen and not heard. When I woke up the next morning I was taken to the operating area. I felt secure in this place. Ether was the choice gas for keeping the patient asleep. The mask scared me. The smell was horrible and my ears roared like a freight train. Recovery and the time I spent there is a blur instead of a memory. The only memory is of being on a little outside patio play area with other children. I looking up to see mom standing in the doorway. She looked so beautiful. Her hair was combed nice, her dress was nice and she had bright red lip stick on her lips. The red lipstick I never forgot the color or smell. After that we would travel by greyhound bus from Harlan, Kentucky to Corbin and by train to Louisville to see the doctors at the Kosair Childrens Hospital clinic. We would stay with a family who mom lived with from age 9 to 15. William Hale's family was middle class and had a beautiful cape cod house with fenced back yard and a concrete front porch with a swing. Their granddaughter Patricia Sue and I became fast friends. I slept with Patricia Sue in her beautiful room. Patricia Sue had lots of dolls, a doll house and other toys. All I had was one doll. The next surgery was the summer before my 8th birthday. I had fallen off the top railing of our fenced in chicken lot a few weeks before and broken my arm. When I was admitted to Kosair Hospital they could not operate on me until my cast came off. Mom could not stay the entire time I was in the hospital so before the surgery she went back home to take care of my brothers and dad. My hospital stay lasted six weeks. I was without my mom for about a month. I had my first dental visit then. I had never heard of or seen a Dentist. There were people looking in my mouth and poking at my teeth and then they pulled one of my teeth. I only know that I was very scared and upset and swore never to let a dentist touch me again. The day of surgery was worse than the dentist though. I fouht for my life in that dentist seat and when that horrible mask was brought out again it took several nurses and doctors to hold me down. Mr. and Mrs. Hale and Patricia Sue's mother Weida would come to visit me and Daddy's aunt Octavia and two of her children would visit me. The presents they brought cheered me up. Once again I was in a big ward with lots of other girls. I made a friend in the ward I was in. Her name was Portia also. The food tasted great and was different than my diet of pinto beans, fried potatoes and cornbreat at home. The next surgery was an operation on my left foot. I did not have any muscles to be able to lift my toes up when I made a step. The brace I had been wearing did this for me. By this time I was a pro at being in the operating room. This time I was ready for the mask and foul smelling Ether. But, thank God for progress, a needle in my right arm supplied the sleeping medication. I talked to the doctor and the nurses until I fell asleep. I woke to the most pain I had ever felt before. As an adult I sprained my ankle requiring an exray of my aflicted foot. I told the doctor the story my mother had been told, the surgery I had as a child resulted in muscles and tendens being sewn together to make my foot permanently stiff so I would not drag my toes anymore. The foot doctor informed me, that was not what was done to me. The bones of my ankle were fused together. Well, I thought, no wonder it hurt so bad. I woke up screaming from the pain. My mom was sick with a migrane and that was just too much to take, my screaming in pain that is, she yelled for the nurse and fainted. She was taken to the waiting room and they called my surgeon for help. He teased mom when she woke up for being such a bad patient when I had been so brave in the operating room. The pain lasted for days. I would cry for a pain shot long before the 4 hours between shots was up. continued . . . . |