Quarantine in 1935: When Polio Entered Our House

These words are my mother’s, Patricia Jeanne Warehime Thomas (August 7, 1927 – September 5, 2015).

They were spoken in a video recording and in a story she told me, which I later transcribed and wrote in a journal for her.

I have not edited her words. I have only placed them in chronological order, to the best of my ability.

Part 1-

Before Polio

When I was eight, after I had my tonsils out, I was sent to live with my grandparents. They didn’t have the funds to keep the city's schools open. I was already a year behind, so I went down there and lived with my grandparents for a year. That meant the year I was in second grade; I didn’t live at home.

We went back to Ashtabula 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 Ed and me back to Ohio to live again, away from the city. Uncle George drove us down.

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.

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.”

So, 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.

The city health department came out and put a sign on the door that said 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.

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.