SAVED
Part One of Two
by Marie Delgado Travis
For the first years of my life, I was an only child, with all of the spoiling and coddling that entails. I was a happy, nosey, mischievous sprite. But my health was delicate, so a lot of "quality time" with my parents was spent in doctors' waiting rooms and clinics. Besides being extremely myopic, I contracted the full range of childhood illnesses in quick succession: chicken pox, mumps, measles, tonsillitis and a myriad of other minor viruses and infections. In retrospect, perhaps God was preparing me and my parents for what was to come.
The first time I was away from home was when my Mom went to the hospital to give birth to my little brother. I had just turned six and would be spending a few days with friends of the family. A fussy child, I noted with dismay that their downtown neighborhood wasn't very clean. It was the broiling summer of 1955 and bad odors emanated from the streets and sewers. I was excited when it was time to return home and see my new little brother. But because I was running a fever, my mother kept me away from him, as a precaution. Soon the fever was raging. Although the family doctor diagnosed it merely as a cold, nothing seemed to lower my temperature, not even ice. In fact, as the hours passed, it only seemed to get higher.
Despite feeling terribly ill, as soon as my parents´ attentions focused elsewhere, I decided to make a break for it and finally sneak a peek at my baby brother. Halfway towards his room, I fell. My father heard the noise and hurried over to pick me up, but I was dead weight. With difficulty, he managed to get me into bed again and call an ambulance. The doctor, too, was summoned and as soon as he heard what had happened, he pronounced the dreaded word, ¨poliomyelitis.¨ It was just about the time that the polio vaccine was being administered to school children. A month or so later, I would have started first grade and been given the vaccine orally or by injection. Instead, I found myself in the basement of a run-down old hospital in New York, hearing the gruesome screams of other children with infantile paralysis as catheters were administered, so that they could "go to the bathroom." We endured painful injection after injection. I wondered how the nurses could continue to find spaces on my arms for more shots. I also sensed, from the nurses´ harried faces that no one really knew if they would do any good, anyway.
Just when I began to recognize the pattern of the daily tortures, I was transferred to another ward. I couldn't see if there were other children nearby because of the partition surrounding my bed. But I did hear the doctor explain to my mother that if my fever didn't stop within the next 24 hours, I would have to be placed in an iron lung. I didn't know what that was, but from my mother's reaction, I could tell that it was awful and that it would be forever. "Oh, no, please, not that," I could hear her beseeching the doctor and sobbing.
I prayed as fervently as any small child has ever prayed. For some reason, I felt most comfortable directing my prayer to the Blessed Mother. Perhaps I felt that, as a Mother herself, she would have the most compassion for mine. I struck a deal with Our Lady. I told her that if she spared my mother from additional suffering, I promised to be good from then on. That moment marked a complete transformation in my personality. Gone was the sassy little troublemaker. In her place was a serious, mature, obedient child.
I drifted in and out of consciousness and just a few hours before the deadline the doctor had given, my fever broke and I began to shiver. With the fever's slow, steady decline, my recovery from polio had begun.
MARIE DELGADO TRAVIS is an award-winning author. She writes poetry and prose in English and Spanish. Her bilingual poetry collection, LA VENTANA / THE WINDOW received Honorable Mention at the Ninth Annual International Latino Book Awards at Book Expo America in New York City this May. The title poem, "The Window" won Second Place in the international Tom Howard Poetry Contest in late 2005. Marie's books are available through major online booksellers, including Amazon.com. Visit her web site:
http://hometown.aol.com/marilutravis/index.html.
