Monday Memories--Polio

By the time I was old enough to consider such things, polio was a disease that was largely on the ropes. The efforts of the March of Dimes led to vaccines that had largely wiped it out. I don't know if I had a polio shot in the 1950s and my mom no longer remembers. But I do know that in the early 1960s I lined up with my family at the gym of a local junior high school to consume a sugar cube that had a pink dot on it. That pink dot was the oral polio vaccine.

Polio was a disease that had touched my family. My uncle, my mom's youngest brother, had polio when he was about 12. One leg was shorter than the other after that, which gave him a rolling gate. He recovered and was strong, lifting hog carcasses at a meat packing plant for most of his life. But in the cruel twist of fate, polio returned to take away his strength and cripple him more in recent years.

When my son, Moose, was a baby he received the oral polio vaccine from a little plastic vial that was cut open and placed in his mouth. The nurse said that it had a nice taste, but I remember that Moose screamed bloody murder when he tasted it. Still, a very small price to pay to avoid such a cruel disease.

In a recent television report on the polio vaccine I heard that polio became a scourge in modern times because babies were less likely to be breastfed and were more protected from exposure to disease. When not exposed to polio while they had some immunities the disease had terrible consequences. The arrival of the vaccine seemed like a miracle of modern science.

I am thankful to live in these days with cleanliness and furnaces and hot water and vaccines. But, I know that the blessings I receive are not those of the triumph of man and modern science. Polio may be one scourge that has passed me by, but there will be others. There are always others. I know that my salvation is not in modern science and that total healing, total perfection will not be achieved heree and now. In this world there will be troubles. I know where my salvation rests.