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Mimi Meade, age 7 in April 1954, winces as Dr. Richard Mulvaney inoculates her with the then-experimental Salk polio vaccine. Mrs. John Lucas, a registered nurse, holds Mimi's arm steady at a medical office in Northern Virginia.
The emergency polio ward at Haynes Memorial Hospital in Boston bustled in August 1955 as the city's polio epidemic hit a high
Jody Zogran was a nurse at Municipal Hospital in Pittsburgh during the early '50s, at the same time Dr. Jonas Salk
Jody Zogran in the 1950s
Dr. Jonas Salk, 38, works in a Pittsburgh laboratory in March 1954 soon after a successful test of his polio vaccine. Assistant Ethel J. Bailey is at right in the photograph. |
IT'S BEEN nearly 55 years, but Jody Zogran of Lake of the Woods will never forget the haunting visage of a cute little 5-year-old named Danny.
At the time, the Orange County woman was a polio nurse at Municipal Hospital in Pittsburgh, a communicable disease facility designated as a polio hospital during the 1952 outbreak of the debilitating disease.
Working one on one with patients who had to be in devices such as iron lungs or "rocking beds" to breathe, the 22-year-old Zogran got close to patients who depended on nurses for everything from hand-feeding to suctioning of congested throats and noses.
Though she worked with a countless stream of patients, Zogran especially remembers Danny, a lad with a quick smile and blond locks.
She left one Friday afternoon, telling him she'd see him first thing Monday morning.
"When I came in after the weekend, his room was empty," she said, her eyes moistening at the memory from so long ago. "My little Danny boy was gone. I decided then and there, if I ever had a boy, I'd give him that name."
Alas, Jody and Ray Zogran had only girls.
But in the past year or two, memories like the loss of that young polio patient moved the 76-year-old Lake of the Woods retiree to share her experiences.
The result: a booklet that outlines what it was like to be on the front lines of health care against the horrible disease.
During Zogran's time at the hospital, Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, was doing that important work several floors below her in the basement of the hospital they all called "Muni."
And while it wasn't what you'd ever call glamorous, the daily collection of bedpans--containing the live polio virus the vaccine-seekers needed to craft the cure--was crucial to the fight against polio.
"We had med students from the University of Pittsburgh standing by to run the bedpans down the three floors to the basement," she said. "We called them our little honey-dippers."
Early test subjects also were unique.
"The monkeys they used to test the vaccines on were on the floor below us in the hospital," said Zogran. "At 6 every morning, they would wake up and bang the metal dishes in their cages against the bars, wanting breakfast. We called it 'monkey time,' and it meant our night shift was about over."
Zogran lasted a little over a year in the polio ward, a physically and mentally draining experience that saw her drop from 120 to 108 pounds.
"I didn't really think about the risk of working there when I started," she said, noting that the hospital paid a premium for its nurses, partly because the work was so hands-on. Stringent isolation and anti-contamination protocols were also in place.
Her book explains the work itself, the way nurses learned to care for patients who were either sealed into iron lungs up to their necks, rocking in beds that forced their lungs to fill and empty or fitted with portable breathing devices known as Monahan lungs.
It also shares how difficult it was to see polio patients treated with the "Sister Kenny method," a process where the sick were treated with hot packs, exercises and massages to lessen muscle atrophy.
"These processes were quite painful, and we could hear the patient begging the therapist to stop," she wrote. "However, this would help. Polio did not discriminate. All ages, both sexes and all races were victims to this life-threatening and debilitating disease."
Zogran, who has given talks about her experiences recently, said she decided to compile the information after one of her daughters saw a TV documentary and asked about her days
"So many younger people don't know anything about polio and those days, the fear and hysteria that swept across the country," she said.
The short book, produced with the help of her husband, Ray, was mainly aimed at telling her family and friends about those days.
Zogran has decided to sell copies for $5 to support the efforts of the Rotary International PolioPlus program to eradicate polio throughout the world. All proceeds go to the the Rotary Foundation.
Local Rotary officials said Rotary International launched its polio-eradication program in 1985, when there were 350,000 new cases in 125 countries each year.
In 1988, Rotary was joined by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are now fewer than 2,000 cases of polio per year. Only four countries still have polio--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and India.
To reach ROB HEDELT:
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com
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Want to hear more? To buy Zogran's book on her experiences as a polio nurse, send $5 checks to the Rappahannock-Fredericksburg Rotary Club, Attention: Ken Tillman, Box 8492, Fredericksburg, Va. 22404. Checks should be made out to the Rotary Foundation.
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