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Grandmom Brown / By Richard Stroud

She was a nurse and I was glad she was. But she was something more important. She was my angel of mercy.

I came home sick from Blenheim Elementary School. I had a fever and could hardly move my neck, back or legs. Mom looked me over and called Doc Laphoon. The doctor told mom he would be over after his office closed.

Mom put me to bed, then she called Grandmom Brown. She thought she could get some advice until the doctor got there. Grandmom Brown listened to all of it, then she told mom to put an ice-pack on my forehead and try to get me to eat some chicken broth. She would come over as soon as she could.

Grandmom got there before the doctor. She looked at me, then went into the other room to talk to mom. I could hear them, but couldn't quiet catch what they were saying. Mom came back into the bedroom after Grandmom left. I could see tears in her eyes.

She put a cold cloth on my forehead and sat on the bed until Doc Laphoon got there.

"Let's have a look at your boy," he said. He set his little black bag on the foot of the bed, then started uncovering me. "Can you bend your legs, Dick?"

I tried to, but it hurt so bad I cried out. I couldn't lift them or move much of my body at all. He asked, "Are you having any trouble breathing?" I told him no. He smiled at me and touched me tenderly and left the room with mom.

I strained to hear what they were saying. I heard Doctor Laphoon say the word "Polio." I knew of it. A lot was going around the country. Many swimming pools had to be closed because that is where the doctors thought it was coming from. Mom called dad home to tell him.

I knew something bad was happening. People were being put in Iron Lungs to help them breathe. Others were dying. A lot were paralyzed and had to wear leg braces. Some ended up in wheelchairs. Every one of them should have had Grandmom Brown.

She took leave from her job at Menorah Hospital. Grandmom became my night and day nurse, applying hotpacks of towels over my body continuously. It was the treatment Sister Kenny had found in the Australian outback. It had worked there, so Grandmom put me under the same treatment. I remember waking in pain in the middle of some nights, seeing Grandmom Brown sleeping in a rocker.

Sister Kenny wrote her autobiography "And They Shall Walk" in 1943. That was the year I had Polio and survived.

Grandmom Brown never left my side for three months, the time it took for me to fully recover and walk back to school.