Coronavirus Pandemic Evokes Memories for Polio Survivor

"It's like now — you need to stay away from people,” she says. “We were quarantined the entire summer, for three months, because we came down with it in June. No one could come to our house.”

Griffin remains thankful that their cases were not severe enough to impair their movement and make it difficult to breathe, requiring an iron lung. Indeed, she remembers children in her town who did not survive the illness.

She also recollects the public calls for good hygiene, to deter the spread of the virus.

"Just like now,” Griffin says, “we had to wash our hands so often."

Vaccine changes the game

Once a polio vaccine was created, in 1955, restrictions eased on social activities, though Griffin points out that people were still “very anxious.” The vaccine also came four years too late to prevent her illness, the effects of which lingered through her childhood.

"Until [the vaccine's creation], we could go to school, but I know with my parents, when I got home from school, I had to go to bed,” she says. “I think my mother made me go to bed until I graduated high school and went into college. Because you were tired."

The original polio vaccine was injectable. An oral vaccine became available in 1963. Both are still in use today. The number of polio cases plunged after the introduction of a vaccine. No cases of polio have originated in the U.S. since 1979, according to the CDC, though the disease remains a threat in some other countries.

Long road to recovery

Griffin's recovery from polio was very slow. It was difficult to eat, she recalls, so she and her brother became very thin. “We were very pale, and just the weakness in our legs. We would have to exercise our legs daily, because that's where the pain was. It took several years for us really to get back to, you might say, a normal teenager.”

Their mother was by their side throughout the recovery process. “Mother would rub our legs and rub our legs,” Griffin says. “And she would rub mine for a while, and then she would rub my brother's for a while. And I remember this went on for several years. I would wake her up during the night and tell her my legs hurt, and she would rub up my legs. And my brother did the same.”

Lessons from the past

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest in mid-March, Griffin and her husband have stayed home. Any visitors wear masks.

"We've not been to restaurants or anything like that, because having had polio, I'm afraid,” she explains.

For nearly 25 years, Griffin has been a member of the Longview Rotary Club in Longview, Texas, and has helped raise funds for polio eradication. In 2012 she and other members traveled to India to help administer polio vaccination drops to children.

"After having gone to India, and to see the people that are called ‘crawlers’ on the street because their parents could not give them the polio vaccine,” she says, “one of the most important things that you could do is to vaccinate your children."