Jean is bigger than I am. A lot bigger, in fact! She eats too much! Mother tried to look stern, but I think she was smiling. She said she would try to take in the bathing suit a bit. She is always taking in Jean’s clothes for me, but then I just have big bunches of cloth around my waist and I look bulky.
Thursday, July 8, 1937
The Governor-General of Canada, Lord Tweedsmuir, came here — to Saskatoon! Grandpa made Edmund, Bessie and me walk to the train station with him “for this historical event.” It took forever to get there and Bessie and I thought we were going to die of heat. We didn’t see much, as Lord and Lady Tweedsmuir were quickly greeted by Mayor Pinder and everyone went inside again. Grandpa said the Governor-General was travelling across the prairies to see how bad the drought was. I asked Grandpa why anyone would want to look at dusty fields. He said that hopefully we can learn from this Depression and it will never happen again. He said that is what history is for — to help us not make the same mistakes over and over again. Edmund, Bessie and I complained that Grandpa sounded like a school lesson, but he did treat us to ice cream on the way home. That was the best part.
Saturday, July 10, 1937
At supper last night Mother said she really missed James. Edmund asked her how come she misses him when he and I are still here. Mother said she loves all her children and when one is away, she misses that child. Edmund said, “Even Noreen if she was away?” Mother laughed and said yes and put her arm around me. I really don’t think that was a laughing matter at all. I think she should have made Edmund apologize to me.
Sunday, July 11, 1937
Because we hadn’t been in church for a couple of Sundays, Reverend McKay came to see us this afternoon. Mother told him she worries that with all the people in church, and the heat, there would be a lot of germs and that she doesn’t want Edmund and me to be exposed to polio. Reverend McKay told her God would protect us. For some reason Dad studied the ceiling when the reverend said that. In fact, he looked at the ceiling most of Reverend McKay’s visit. I looked up, but I didn’t see a crack or a spider up there. Mother nodded, but I don’t think she believes Reverend McKay.
Mother made us hide our playing cards when she saw the reverend get out of his car in front of our house. She yelled at Dad to put a shirt on (he was in his undershirt because he was hot) and threw her apron into the oven to hide it and fluffed her hair with her fingers before opening the front door. We had to sit on chairs all afternoon and visit with him. After he left, Mother said she was mortified because she just knew Reverend McKay was expecting to be asked for supper, but we were only having bologna and you couldn’t serve bologna to a man of the cloth. Dad said that he wore cloth and he ate bologna. Mother said she was sending signals to Dad all afternoon to button up his shirt. Dad said he wondered what all that fiddling with her top was about. He grumbled the rest of the day about wasted afternoons. We spent a long time looking for Mother’s apron before finding it in the oven.
Monday, July 12, 1937
This is so exciting! There is to be a pet parade and fun show at the Hudson Bay’s service station downtown tomorrow and a prize for the best pet float and costume. At first Mother didn’t want us to go, but Grandpa persuaded her. He said that Mother couldn’t keep us wrapped up in cotton batting all summer long. Then he said he’d go with us and keep people away, so Mother relented. After that Bessie’s mother decided to let Bessie go, too. As we haven’t any pets of our own, we’re going to take two of Grandpa’s rabbits. I have to go now and make a costume for Edmund, myself and the rabbits. Edmund is decorating the wagon as our float. I told him to put paper carrots all over it.
Monday, July 12, 1937, evening
We didn’t win and it’s all Edmund’s fault. I put an extra big puff on one rabbit’s backside to be Peter Cottontail and a big bow on the other rabbit’s head to be Flopsy, except Peter Cottontail ate Flopsy’s bow before we even got downtown. That was too bad because Bessie and I had matching bows on our heads and puffy tails made from Mother’s feather dusters. I made Edmund big ears and a puffy tail too, but he pulled them off before we got to the parade. He said the tail was dumb and the contest was dumb. He wouldn’t even march with us, so Bessie and I had to pull the wagon ourselves. We tried to hop, like a real rabbit, but it’s hard with a wagon handle in your hand. Edmund wouldn’t have said that the contest was dumb if he’d won the boy’s prize — a radio set. The girl’s prize was a doll. I don’t play with dolls much anymore, but I would have liked a new one.
On the way home we saw a display in one of the shop windows with quilts and old clothes for the Saskatoon City Relief. I’m very glad we aren’t on Relief. Bessie said Ann Lute’s family is. My legs are aching now, and I’m tired from pulling the wagon all the way to the pet parade and back, and it’s all Edmund’s fault!
Tuesday, July 13, 1937
We sneaked into the pool again today. Ann Lute was there and Bessie said we better not get too close because her germs would leap onto us, so every time she came near us, we screamed “Germs!” and ran away.
Ann wore the most dreadful bathing suit. Mine might be too big and a hand-me-down, but Ann’s had holes in it and looked about a hundred years old.
We said we were poor again so we didn’t have to pay. I felt sort of bad lying about that, but maybe it’s not a lie. I don’t think Mother has five cents for Edmund and me to go swimming.
Only three days until I’ll be twelve! Mother said I could have Bessie over for an afternoon tea. I told Edmund he couldn’t come and he said that he didn’t want to come to a dumb old tea party with girls anyway.
Friday, July 16, 1937
My 12th Birthday!
I was sick for two days. I’m feeling better now, but Mother says I have to rest one more day, so I can’t have my afternoon birthday tea. I started to cry and Mother said not to be silly and that I could have it next week and we’d pretend it was my birthday all over again. She felt my forehead for fever so many times in the last two days my head is still aching.
I did have a fever, too, and my legs and back were aching. Mother said I had heatstroke.
I’m lying on the old couch in the screened front porch while writing this so I can get a bit of air. It smells. The couch, I mean, not the air. Mother and Grandpa are in the kitchen. We finally got some rain today, though Grandpa told Mother it was not enough to save the crops. We haven’t had a good harvest in four years. Grandpa said it was because we’re a one-crop province — wheat — and when the bottom went out of the market for wheat (I’m not sure what bottom he means) there were no other crops to fall back on, so we ended up in the sorry position we’re in now. Grandpa said that the population of Saskatoon has gone down instead of up because people are moving East looking for work.
I’m too tired to write any more. Grandpa says I should do some reading as it wouldn’t tire me out. I’m not too fond of reading, except my favourite book, Heidi.
Friday, July 30, 1937
In the hospital
It has been a long time since I wrote in here. A nurse brought my diary to me today. Grandpa had given it to her. She told me to call her Nurse Betty. He also gave her a message for me — that words can be friends when you are lonely, and that writing your fears down, seeing them written on paper, makes the fears lessen. I think Grandpa made Nurse Betty memorize that part, because she almost sounded like him. I miss him and Edmund and Mother and Dad so much. They are not allowed to see me because I am in the isolation ward, which is an entirely separate building from the regular hospital. It’s to keep our germs from spreading around.
Saturday, July 31, 1937
All the nurses and doctors wear masks so only their eyes show. One time when I was very sick, I thought they were ghosts and screamed because I thought I was dead.
There are two regular nurses here; Nurse Betty is nice, but Nurse Winter is crabby. The hospital smells of medicine, food and poop (I’m not supposed to say that word but my diary is secret). I’m scared here. I can’t write
anymore because my arms are too tired. I have to hold the book over my head and my right arm shakes so much I can’t write properly.
August 1937
Sunday, August 1, 1937
I have polio.
The day I came to the hospital, an old doctor who has big black eyebrows like caterpillars made grumpy Nurse Winter roll me up on my side, and then he stuck a needle in my back. It hurt very badly. I had to lie completely still afterwards.
The needle was to take spinal fluid to test for polio, so that’s how they know I have it. Nurse Betty told me I’m over the worst of the initial illness, but I’m still really scared. Mother and Aunt Ella have a school friend who had polio and she is crippled and has to lie in bed all day because she can’t walk. Others who’ve had it have to use crutches. People can die from polio!
Maybe if I say the word polio enough times, it won’t be so scary. I think I’ll have to say it a lot, though.
Mother and Dad were finally allowed to see me today, though it was through the door’s glass window because I am still in the isolation ward at the City Hospital and Nurse Winter said they couldn’t come in to see me directly, because they might catch my disease. I was going to tell her that Dad had carried me into the hospital and Mother had held me in Grandpa’s car, and they hadn’t gotten polio, but I thought that was saucy, so I didn’t. My legs hurt so bad at times, it makes me cry. The muscles in my back get all hard and it makes me curve my back. My right arm is getting better, but it still took me ALL day just to write this!
Monday, August 2, 1937
Here is a secret I’m not supposed to know: I just overheard the caterpillar-eyebrow doctor tell Nurse Betty that I am paralyzed from the waist down. I
Afternoon
I am so scared. My legs don’t move one bit, and my toes don’t wiggle, though I try and try to make them. They also hurt terribly. It feels like all my leg bones are held together with tight wire. The caterpillar doctor ran a tongue depressor down the sole of my foot and even that hurt! I wonder why I can feel the tongue depressor, yet my legs won’t move. I keep telling my brain to move my legs, but they won’t.
Night-time
I can’t sleep because there is a small boy in here with me, named Eugene, who also has polio and he is having trouble breathing. I keep getting scared he’ll stop. There is a woman here too, who I think has polio, but I don’t know her name. She has screens around her bed all the time. It’s very lonely in here. I miss Mother and Dad, Grandpa and James and Edmund and Bessie. I’m so scared I’m going to die.
Wednesday, August 4, 1937
Two new nurses helped Nurse Winter put my legs in leather and metal splints today. It really hurt, so I cried. Nurse Winter told me to not be a baby and if I didn’t stop making a fuss, she would leave the splints off and I’d get drop foot. I didn’t want drop foot so I cried quietly after that. I wonder what drop foot is. The splints keep my knees bent slightly, and keep my feet pulled out a bit and my legs spread apart. It is very uncomfortable.
Monday, August 9, 1937
I’ll write a bit about how I became ill. I’ll do it a little bit at a time so I don’t get too tired. There’s nothing else to do here.
After my birthday, I felt better for a few days and I even went outside a bit, though Mother wouldn’t let me go in the sun. Then one morning — I can’t remember which because I have lost track of the days — I went to get out of bed and fell on the floor because my right leg wouldn’t work properly. I screamed for Mother. She called Dad at the brewery. He said I was probably just having a dizzy spell, and it would go away and he couldn’t leave work. So Mother called Grandpa and he came over. I had a bad headache and slept most of the day. My entire body hurt, even my hand when Grandpa held it. I had to use a chamber pot to go to the bathroom, as I couldn’t walk to it. Mother had to help me.
The next morning both my legs wouldn’t work and Mother called Dr. Frasier, who came and examined me. He kept looking at my tongue, though I told him it was my legs that were sick. He tried to make me put my chin to my chest, but I
Afternoon
Nurse Betty came to give me a bath, so I had to stop writing.
Anyway, I couldn’t put my chin to my chest. That’s when Mother started crying, which really scared me. I didn’t want Dr. Frasier to touch me anywhere because my entire body hurt so badly. I am crying now, remembering. I think I’m being punished for disobeying Mother and going to the pool. But why isn’t Edmund being punished? Maybe because I’m older and should have known better?
After supper
Eugene is having a lot of trouble breathing, so he can’t talk much. I did ask him, though, if he went swimming before he got sick and he said no. He’s very scared. I hope I don’t have trouble breathing, too! I wish Mother was here.
Tuesday, August 10, 1937, after lunch and a nap
Dr. Lear came in to see me this morning. He is not old like the other doctor and is very funny. I think beneath his mask he is probably quite handsome. He took the splints off my legs and tickled my feet. He told me my legs are floppy like a Raggedy Ann doll. He said he was happy that my right arm is working better. I told him I was writing in a diary and he said that was a very good idea because it would keep my fingers limber. I didn’t tell him my writing is so awful I can barely read it.
I asked him how I got the polio germs. Nurse Winter came up then and said the doctor was too busy to be talking to me, but Dr. Lear said that he wanted to explain about polio to me, as he thought that the more a person knows about their illness the less scared that person will be. Nurse Winter sort of snorted, but didn’t say anything more because doctors outrank nurses.
Dr. Lear said polio is caused by a virus that is thought to be found in milk and water supplies and comes from waste. (That means poop.) I didn’t tell him about going to the pool because I didn’t want him to think badly of me. He said the virus gets into the central nervous system, whose job it is to send messages from the brain to the muscles — for example to tell a leg muscle to walk. The virus damages the central nervous system so the messages don’t get through. Then he gave me a needle. He said it was a convalescent serum made from the blood of people who had survived polio and hopefully it would prevent further paralysis.
After supper
I got too tired to keep writing so I’ll continue now.
I asked Nurse Betty how to spell a lot of these words for my diary. I asked Dr. Lear if my legs would ever walk again, and he said no one could know that for sure until the disease had run its course, but some people regained full use of their legs, while others were able to walk with crutches and canes. It takes a long time, though, almost a year or more, to know the final damage to the central nervous system. He also said that scientists were studying infantile paralysis — he uses the same word for polio as Bessie’s mother does — and making progress every day toward new treatments.
I asked him what drop foot was. He said that because the muscles in my legs were tight, they pulled my feet down, and without the splints and the footboard at the end of the bed that hold my feet straight up, they would droop. The splints on my legs are to keep my legs straight so they don’t get deformed. I won’t mind using the splints now that I know they are to help me. I’m glad my arms work because at least I can write. Eugene can’t move anything.
Bedtime
There’s nothing to do so I’ll continue remembering back to when I was at home. Dr. Frasier told Mother and Dad I should go to the hospital. Even though it was a hundred degrees outside, Mother wrapped me in a wool blanket and Dad carried me to Grandpa’s automobile. My legs wouldn’t walk, but every tiny jostle hurt them. At the hospital I went immediately into the isolation ward. This is the sickest I’ve ever been. I know I had a fever because I remember someone washing my face and hands and arms to cool me down. I also remember that every time I was moved or my bed was changed, it hurt so much I cried.
I’m too tired to write any more. I sleep a lot these days, though at night I’m wide awake.
I wonder why Edmund didn’t get polio.
Wednesday, August 11, 1937
Mother and Dad and Grandpa came to visit me again today, though all they could do was look in at me and wave through the window in the door. Dad was crying. I’ve never seen Dad cry before and it really scared me. I asked Nurse Betty if I was dying. She said no, and that was a relief. She told me Mother has called every day to see how I am doing.
It was bath day today and the nurses washed my hair and tugged so hard to get the tangles out it really hurt. Nurse Betty pretended to look for mice in my “nest.” That made me laugh instead of cry, which is what I really wanted to do. Mother finally agreed to cut my hair because it is hard for the nurses to take care of. For the past year I have begged Mother to cut my hair into a bob like the other girls at school, but she said my hair was too lovely and curly to cut. Then, after Nurse Betty convinced her it would make me more comfortable, she agreed. So Nurse Betty got some scissors from the nursing station and with a student nurse holding my head still, she cut my hair. She did a nice job, considering she is a nurse and not a hair cutter. My head feels much lighter.
To Stand on My Own Page 2