Polio Strikes Norma Quinn Potter

I’m very encouraged by the great reader response I’m getting from Norma’s memories. They are truly delightful. But there’s a dark lining to every silver cloud and, for Norma, it was a bout with polio as a young adult.

Just like today’s COVID epidemic, the polio epidemic of the 1940s and ’50s caused great fear. When there was an outbreak, usually in the summer, social events were cancelled and theaters closed. Whereas COVID took mostly aged folks, polio took young people, often children. If it didn’t kill them outright, it often left them crippled.

Here’s Norma’s story in her own words: “The year was 1952. On Feb. 3 I had just gotten off work at Edwards Photography and was walking home. It was all uphill to the town of Montrose. I walked through town, stopping at Mode O’Day to pick up some things I had on layaway. I was feeling very tired and the rest of the way home was more uphill. I could barely put one foot in front of the other by the time I got home. I woke up in the morning with a headache, sore throat and stiff neck. I couldn’t swallow and was aching all over.”

Norma was seen by a Montrose doctor who misdiagnosed her as having a bad flu. She continued to get worse, losing function in her legs and experiencing increasing muscular weakness. She saw a Glendale neurologist who correctly diagnosed her polio and she was admitted to the Glendale Sanitarium (today’s Glendale Adventist).

“By this time, I had such advanced muscle weakness that I could not sign my admission form and had to make an ‘X.’ The treatments there consisted of weekly injections of B12 and iron, which made me break out with sores on my back and made my hair turn red. I made daily trips to the basement where I was placed on a canvas gurney and lowered into a large tank full of warm water. A therapist stood beside the tank and took one leg to the side as far as it would go, and then she pushed it a little further. She then repeated the process on the other side. I thought surely they would come off in her hands it hurt so bad.

“Another of my daily treatments, which I really dreaded, was the Sister Kenny treatment. The nurse would wheel in a large metal tank [that] looked like a new-age turkey cooker. It contained boiling hot towels which she handled with wooden tongs. One by one she lifted them out and placed them on my bare back and then covered it with a blanket to hold the steam in.”

Norma was in the hospital for many weeks. When she wasn’t enduring these tortuous treatments, she was exercising at the hospital – squats, leg-lifts and back bends to try to regain her strength. She was released on April 24, her 29^th birthday.

“Now, with the initial extreme treatment behind me, it was time to go into the rehab mode at home. This meant daily stretching of the leg muscles, squatting, waist bends and walking. The affected parts of my body were the left leg, which was two-inches smaller in circumference than my right leg, my right arm which was difficult to control, and my throat, making it hard to swallow. By the end of six months my legs were of equal size and I had a normal gait.

“In looking back and as usual trying to find the humorous side in this experience, I would say it was seeing those small 6-year-old hands of my administering angel daughter Neddy trying to stretch her mommy’s heavy legs. She also watched carefully as I applied my makeup with my left hand supporting my errant right hand. This method was very necessary to keep my right hand under control. Many is the time that my eyebrows didn’t match or my lipstick ended up a nostril.”

Next week, we’ll hear from Norma’s daughter Neddy. She’ll recount what it was like for a 6-year-old to see her mommy go through this experience.