“Everybody had to have a tan in those days,” Pit, now 95, recalls. “We had been swimming, and I went out on a rooftop. I laid there for two hours and didn’t even burn.”

After hours in the sun, Pit developed a terrible headache. She remembers returning to her home, a two-story estate in the grand Ryan Place neighborhood, and telling her mother about the pain.

“The polio headache is one of the worst headaches. You can’t talk. It’s like a hammer,” she explained in a recent interview. “My mother called the doctor and said ‘something’s wrong, Pit’s very ill.’”

At that time, Fort Worth was in the middle of a polio outbreak, though Pit does not remember people being afraid or even aware of what was going on. Her doctor, however, knew about the growing number of local cases and insisted she be taken to the hospital.

She was admitted to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital (formerly Harris Hospital) in downtown Fort Worth. A spinal tap confirmed her diagnosis and she was placed in an isolated area of the hospital reserved for children with polio.

“It was a great, big room with about 35 beds. There were old-fashioned washing machines everywhere,” she said. “The nurses put the pads in the machines in hot, hot water and rang them out. That’s how they got the hot pads to put on our bodies to stop the spasms. My father donated about 100 of these machines to the hospital.”

Much like COVID-19 today, polio was somewhat of a mystery to medical professionals. There was no medicine to treat its symptoms, nor a vaccine to prevent its spread. The only thing doctors and nurses knew to do was to apply heat.

“It was a lot like today, nobody knew a thing about it,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), polio disabled more than 35,000 people a year in the 1940s. It mostly affected infants and children, and many who caught polio had no symptoms at all. But for those who did, muscle pain and paralysis were common. Some children needed help breathing from an “iron lung,” a negative pressure ventilator.

Pit remembers being the oldest patient in the polio wing and says she became somewhat of a mother figure to the younger children. After many weeks, Pit’s parents decided to bring her home to receive round-the-clock care. One of her caretakers was her great aunt, a nurse who had traveled to Boston to train to take care of children with polio.

Thankfully, Pit recovered from the virus and had no long-term effects. She says the COVID-19 pandemic reminds her of that period in many ways, but stresses that people back then were unified in fighting the disease.

“When the vaccine came out in 1955, people were excited, overjoyed,” she explained. “We could go swimming again. We could have parties again. We didn’t have to be isolated anymore.”

She worries that today’s media environment has played a role in our current division. In the early 1940’s, there was no television, much less internet, and social media. Newspapers and radio were the only way people received their news. Pit thinks that helped her generation trust doctors and science.

“Medical science today, thank goodness, is 10 times better than what we had,” she said, noting that she also had scarlet fever and diphtheria as a child. “People have got to realize that our doctors and nurses are trying.”

Thanks to the polio vaccine, zero cases have originated in the U.S. since 1979. Pit hopes the COVID-19 vaccine will do the same for the current pandemic.

“In life, there are phases, and I believe this is just a phase we are going through,” said Pit. “If you’re able to get the vaccine, you should. I’m 95 years of age, but I can’t wait to have it.”

She credits her excitement for the vaccine to her experience of living for nearly a century.

“Sometimes younger people don’t realize what people my age have lived through. We had wars and illnesses. This is just one more thing we have to work together to get through. And remember, we’re all in this together.”

As a pediatrician, I have been lucky to practice medicine in the post-vaccine era. Although I have watched kids struggle with whooping cough, meningitis, mumps and pneumonia, I am happy to say I have never seen many of the vaccine-preventable diseases. I rely upon my education and training to know about the diseases and recognize them should the need arise.

I do frequently wonder, ‘What was life like for families and children before vaccines were introduced?’ How did people manage the illnesses and anxiety that came with the disease?

For a firsthand answer, I only had to talk to the person sitting at my dining room table during a typical weekend family dinner – my mom.

It was the summer of 1949. While other children were skipping rocks and riding their bikes, my mom was lying in a hospital bed as one of many children struck down by polio.

The illness began as a fever with trouble swallowing and weakness in her left leg. The doctors quickly admitted her to the hospital for quarantine and treatment. Her most vivid memory of the time has to be of the spinal tap used to aid in her diagnosis. At the time, there were no child life specialists to comfort her. She was told to hold still and if she moved the test might kill her.

After 3 months in the hospital with only her mother allowed to stay, her symptoms seemed to be worsening. Her kind physician came into the room one day to visit and cheer up the family. His kindness unfortunately, resulted in him contracting the disease and being confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his days. After all, back then doctors did not even realize the value of handwashing.

I asked my mom what people thought about polio in the pre-vaccine era. “Everybody was scared to death of catching it! They did not know how they got it but knew it was prevalent in the summer months. They tried to avoid the sun and swimming holes since those seemed to be related.”

We now understand the transmission of polio much better. Polio comes from a virus that is highly contagious. It is spread person to person through sneezing, coughing or contact with human feces. Before the successful introduction of the polio vaccine in the 1950s, the disease resulted in the paralysis of 15,000 people per year. Since 1979, no cases of polio have originated within the United States but cases can be brought in by travelers with the disease.

My mom was one of the lucky ones. Just as a conversation with her medical team was turning to placing her in an iron lung to support her breathing she began to recover. The impact of the illness, however, continues to this day with residual weakness in her legs that makes walking for her a constant challenge.

I asked her what she thought about vaccines as a mom and a grandmother. She responded, “I experienced polio and its effect on my life. I want all my kids and grandkids protected so they don’t have to go through what I did.”

Vaccine-preventable diseases such as polio and the re-emerging measles and mumps are not historically that far away from us. We cannot forget the tremendous impact these diseases have had on the lives of so many before the introduction of vaccines.

If you want to learn more, you can check out the CDC website on polio. 

Better yet, just look across the table on a sunny Saturday afternoon and if you are fortunate to do so, ask the folks who lived it. Their stories and experiences are powerful.

More Information On This Topic

• 'I'm Worried Too.' Pediatricians Concered As Texas' Nonmedical Vaccine Exemption Rates Hit All Time-High
• 5 Questions We Get Asked About Vaccines Answered
• Vaccines for Your Children: 9 Facts Parents Need To Know
• Vaccines and Immunizations
• Information for Parents

More than 500 people spanning 20 states have been diagnosed with measles this year already. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, 15 of those cases were in Texas.

For the rare remaining physicians who have treated measles, the news is like déjà vu.

“We learned a lot from the 1989 measles epidemic,” said Deborah Susan Hucaby, M.D., an emergency room physician at Cook Children’s Medical Center. “We got to a point where anyone who came into the pediatric emergency room or clinics with a fever was presumed to have measles until proven otherwise.”

Dr. Hucaby was a resident at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston in 1989 when the worst measles outbreak in recent history occurred. That year, 17,850 measles cases were reported in 47 states with 3,201 of those in Texas.

“At the time, the MMR vaccine was recommended for children at 15 months,” Dr. Hucaby explained. “Due to the high number of unprotected children we were seeing with measles, that recommendation was lowered to 12 months of age. We also started giving the single measles vaccine at 6 months of age.”

For this reason, Dr. Hucaby says a doorbell was installed outside of the pediatric clinic where she worked during the outbreak.

“Parents were asked to ring the bell if their child had a fever, with or without other symptoms,” she said. “A nurse would go out into the hallway to look at the patient. If they appeared to have a risk factor for measles, we would take them straight into an exam room. We didn’t sit them in the waiting room.”

In Houston alone that year, 1,434 children under the age of 5 were diagnosed with measles. Dr. Hucaby says it’s frustrating to interact with parents today who refuse to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella.

“So many of these parents have never seen these diseases. I’m 40 years older than most of them and I have. I have seen kids die from them,” she exclaimed.

Dr. Hucaby says there’s one child she will never forget. The little girl was only 6 months old when she arrived at the hospital with measles and pneumonia. She was too young to have been immunized and died as a result.

“Parents who decide they are OK with their children becoming infected with diseases probably frustrate me the most,” added Dr. Hucaby. “We didn’t see that during the Houston epidemic. Truly, people were willing to vaccinate their children. I don’t remember a single parent saying ‘no’ to a vaccine.”

She said in the 1980s, children often weren’t up to date on their immunizations mostly because parents didn’t see the importance or they had difficulties with transportation or finances. Today, vaccines are more accessible than ever in the U.S. with programs providing low-cost vaccines in every state.

“Every place I worked before Cook Children’s had an infectious disease ward where patients could be isolated,” said Dr. Nelson. “But as infectious diseases became better controlled, particularly the ones that are so contagious like chicken pox and measles, we didn’t need to have a special ward anymore.”

The reason for the decline in such quarantined areas is simply vaccines.

“I have lived through the era where I’ve seen vaccines come and save children’s lives. I have stood in line to get the polio vaccine,” Dr. Nelson explained. “I grew up with a great deal of anxiety about all of these diseases. That’s the piece that is missing in our society now, no one is anxious about these diseases.”

Dr. Nelson had good reason to be anxious. Not only did he know people who fell ill with polio, he himself lived through infections of measles, mumps and chicken pox.

“I had measles when I was a little boy, before I even started school. I remember having to stay in a dark room for four days because they thought light might increase your chances of losing your vision, which was not true, but that was the belief back then,” he said. “I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to die. It was that horrible.”

“As a physician, I’ve seen a ton of children die when there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing anyone could do about it. So it does make me incensed that a parent would put a child at risk for a disease that could kill them based on emotion,” he said. “A parent that has never lost a child doesn’t understand the emotion that they are going to feel if they do.”

Read More About Measles and Vaccines

Resources Available at Cook Children's

There's so much misinformation on the Internet and television about the dangers and risks of immunizations, that it can be hard for a parent to separate the facts from the fears. Visit our website to learn more about our recommmendations regarding vaccines and how to make the best decision for your family. 

Read the story here.

Cook Children's medical staff saw its own cluster of patients in 2016 and has seen sporadic cases since then, as have other hospitals across the nation.

Acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) presents similar to polio in that it causes an abrupt onset of limb weakness an decreased muscle tone, which can have associated problems with urination and, in the worst cases, cause respiratory failure if the muscles involved in the breathing become weak.

“This is a very rare illness and we’re still not sure what causes AFM,” said Mary Suzanne Whitworth, M.D., medical director of Infectious Diseases at Cook Children’s. “It is mostly like caused by a virus or a genetic disorder. At this point, we must treat each child on a case-by-case basis, but the earlier a diagnosis is made, the quicker a plan of action can take place.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says most patients will have a sudden onset of limb weakness and loss of muscle tone and reflexes. Some patients will also experience:

• Facial droop/weakness
• Difficulty moving the eyes
• Drooping eyelids
• Difficulty with swallowing or slurred speech

If you notice any of these symptoms, please notify your doctor immediately. Through thorough testing of the nervous system, doctors will be able to diagnose AFM.

The CDC recommends the following as means of prevention:

• Up to date on all recommended vaccinations, including the poliovirus.
• Protect yourself from mosquito-borne viruses such as West Nile by using mosquito repellent and staying indoors at dusk and dawn.
• Remove standing or stagnant water from properties to minimize the number of mosquitoes in your area.
• Wash hands with soap and water.
• Avoid close contact with sick people.
• Clean surfaces with a disinfectant, especially those that a sick person has touched.

The physicians, nurse practitioners, and staff at Cook Children's Willow Park Pediatrics have all fully vaccinated their children. Every single child. Every single vaccine.

August is National Immunization Awareness Month.

Vaccines save lives. It is a thankless accomplishment.. We can't know the good they have done, as they are arguably the greatest preventative invention in the history of modern medicine.

The vaccines you've received may have saved your life. You will never know. Think about that - a shot you got on a random day, in a random year of your life, may be the reason you're still alive.

We've watched children die of vaccine-preventable illness. We've watched parents cope with the horrific loss of a child, knowing that what happened was preventable. We never want you or your children to go through that.

Let's learn about them. Tune in this month as we teach about the diseases we vaccinate against. Sometimes knowing the other side helps us remember why they're so important.

‪#‎savinglivessilently‬

Hugs,Dr. Diane

Paralysis

It may surprise you to know that there are more than 100 known varieties of non-polio enteroviruses in the world. All of these different types of enteroviruses can cause confusion and panic.

The non-polio enterovirus strains range from the common cold to meningitis. You may have noticed those strains are non-polio enteroviruses, which means that yes, an example of an enterovirus strain that can cause paralysis is polio.

Approximately 1 in 200 infections with polio will cause paralysis. Other enterovirus strains can cause similar symptoms, but do so much less frequently.

There have been a few reports stating that cases of EVD68 have possibly been associated with paralysis, most notably 10 cases in Colorado, 5 cases in California and now a case identified in Dallas. The most common locations for weakness have been the upper arms and hips.

But much work still needs to be done to decide what role EVD68 played in the paralysis. In a published Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report last week, only four of the 10 children in Colorado tested positive for EVD68.

Investigation is ongoing to determine if these cases were actually caused by the virus. Those patients affected will be undergoing extensive physical therapy to regain function.

Death

The CDC released a report this week that announced there have been five deaths in which enterovirus D68 has been associated. We currently don't know the details of two of these cases. We do not know where the patients lived, their ages or if they had other medical conditions. These would all be important factors in determining the cause of death. The fourth patient was a 10-year old girl from Rhode Island who tested positive for enterovirus D68, but also for a bacteria in her blood stream called Staphylococcus aureus. Staph aureus infections are known to be dangerous, often progressing rapidly, and are resistant to many antibiotics.

Another case reported today described a boy who after an unexplained death was found to be positive for enterovirus D68. Prior to his death, he showed no signs or symptoms of upper respiratory infection, other than a case of pink eye which was proven not to be connected to EVD68. Because of these complicating factors, it is unclear what role EVD68 played in these deaths.

It is entirely possible that the others had similar stories with multiple infections or that they had other chronic health conditions which put them at risk for complications. At this point, I continue to believe that, in almost all children, enterovirus D68 causes mild runny nose and cough and that our biggest complication is the progression towards wheezing. Again, there are not many details out surrounding the deaths, but we felt it was important to update you on the situation given that we have stated all along that there had been no deaths clinically caused only by enterovirus D68. We will follow along and update you as soon as we know more.

Enterovirus D68 peaks in late summer and early fall so I expect that the number of cases to begin dropping soon (if it is not already on the way down). Other regions that experienced earlier outbreaks have already seen the end…they are doing what we will be doing soon, preparing for flu.

Our previous articles on Enterovirus D68:

• Health alert: What is Enterovirus D68?
• Enterovirus D68: What you need to know?