Polio Boulevard by Karen Chase

Author:Karen Chase [Chase, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Women
ISBN: 9781438452821
Google: k-YTBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2014-07-24T05:43:26+00:00

Some people will not submit to illness no matter what, as if they can escape, change their fate.

Franklin Roosevelt was often cheerful after he got polio, insistent that he would conquer his disease. He hated pity. But soon after he was carried up the mountains in Morocco to see the sun set, he blurted out to his pal Louis Howe, “Why has God forsaken me?”

No matter what the doctors said, FDR believed he would walk. For years, even until his death, he tried everything. Nothing worked. He amassed power in other ways, became president. Me, I submitted. Then I walked. Note: there is no cause and effect.

When I was sick, I watched Florence, the girl in the next hospital bed, refuse to submit. Her bed was her throne, the world her slave. For royalty, no hospital gowns. Her mother ran back and forth to the ward with freshly laundered clothes. If her mother brought the wrong shirt, Florence sent her home. Everything must be exact. People were summoned, dismissed.

Hospital food—ugh! Her trays came and went, untouched. She had her father bring the exact right lasagna and the exact right soup. She sent her sister out for the exact right cookie.

Her father ran to a deli for chicken salad. “Ugh, disgusting!” she said when she opened the package. “Throw it out! No, wait, I’ll have a bit of bread.”

The ward watched.

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