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Redwood Falls, Minn. —
Betty Russell’s first sign something was wrong hit on August 15, 1946.
“I was 11 years old,” said the Seaforth native this week. “The Wabasso theater used to show free movies. When we got there, my legs hurt so much I just stayed in the car. I thought it was because I had played so much during the daytime.”
The next day, Russell’s parents took her to the doctor, who spoke the word that froze the blood of every parent in the 1940s: polio.
Also known as “infant paralysis,” polio is a viral disease that inflames and damages nerve cells in the lower brain and spinal cord.
Once the infection kicks in, the patient — usually a child — experiences several weeks of increasing paralysis, usually worse in the legs.
In extreme cases, the paralysis spreads to the torso, making patients unable to breathe on their own.
“Three days after I was diagnosed, I was paralyzed. My parents took me to the Sister Kenny Institute in the Twin Cities,” Russell said.
Because she was still infectious, Russell was whisked away from her parents, and not allowed to see them for several weeks.
“I was there 11 months the first time I went there. My brother had it too, but he was able to come home.”
The Sister Kenny Institute, founded in Minneapolis in 1942, was, and still is, one of the most respected rehabilitative treatment centers in the world. In the 1940s, children all across the United States were sent to the Sister Kenny Institute for polio treatment.
The treatments weren’t pleasant. The scalding hot packs on her legs were the easy part.
A friend Russell met at the Institute later wrote: “When Betty was admitted, she could not straighten her legs. The medical professional knew they had to get them straightened out, or she would be in that position the rest of her life.
“Then one day a couple of doctors and two or three nurses marched into our room and over to Betty’s bed.
“While three people held her down, the doctors pulled her legs straight. I will never forget those screams and tears. I finally begged them to ‘please don’t hurt her anymore.’”
After she was released from the Sister Kenny Institute, Russell needed many surgeries to stretch the muscles out in her legs.
“They didn’t think I would ever walk again. I couldn’t straighten my legs,” she said. “I had to use crutches, and wear braces on my legs. We called them ‘Kenny sticks.’”
Betty Russell’s first sign something was wrong hit on August 15, 1946.
“I was 11 years old,” said the Seaforth native this week. “The Wabasso theater used to show free movies. When we got there, my legs hurt so much I just stayed in the car. I thought it was because I had played so much during the daytime.”
The next day, Russell’s parents took her to the doctor, who spoke the word that froze the blood of every parent in the 1940s: polio.
Also known as “infant paralysis,” polio is a viral disease that inflames and damages nerve cells in the lower brain and spinal cord.
Once the infection kicks in, the patient — usually a child — experiences several weeks of increasing paralysis, usually worse in the legs.
In extreme cases, the paralysis spreads to the torso, making patients unable to breathe on their own.
“Three days after I was diagnosed, I was paralyzed. My parents took me to the Sister Kenny Institute in the Twin Cities,” Russell said.
Because she was still infectious, Russell was whisked away from her parents, and not allowed to see them for several weeks.
“I was there 11 months the first time I went there. My brother had it too, but he was able to come home.”
The Sister Kenny Institute, founded in Minneapolis in 1942, was, and still is, one of the most respected rehabilitative treatment centers in the world. In the 1940s, children all across the United States were sent to the Sister Kenny Institute for polio treatment.
The treatments weren’t pleasant. The scalding hot packs on her legs were the easy part.
A friend Russell met at the Institute later wrote: “When Betty was admitted, she could not straighten her legs. The medical professional knew they had to get them straightened out, or she would be in that position the rest of her life.
“Then one day a couple of doctors and two or three nurses marched into our room and over to Betty’s bed.
“While three people held her down, the doctors pulled her legs straight. I will never forget those screams and tears. I finally begged them to ‘please don’t hurt her anymore.’”
After she was released from the Sister Kenny Institute, Russell needed many surgeries to stretch the muscles out in her legs.
“They didn’t think I would ever walk again. I couldn’t straighten my legs,” she said. “I had to use crutches, and wear braces on my legs. We called them ‘Kenny sticks.’”
Russell returned to St. Anne School in Wabasso, the only student in the school with polio at the time.
“At St. Anne’s, I couldn’t go up and down all the stairs,” Russell said. “The other kids would carry me up and down. The boys liked to volunteer to carry me to the cafeteria at noon, since they got to eat early that way.”
What with all the time-outs for polio treatments, she graduated two years later than scheduled, in 1950s.
After graduation, Russell went to commercial college in Mankato to learn secretarial skills.
“I’ve never been able to drive, and have always had family and friends drive me about,” she said.
Russell lived in a boarding house while working several jobs before marrying Douglas Russell. They have two children.
“When I was younger, I never got to carry my children. I just couldn’t stand and carry them; I had to sit down,” she said.
Today she gets around her house in a wheelchair as much for convenience as necessity. However, in public Russell uses the chair in part for the visual cue it provides.
“When I’m shopping, I feel safer in the chair because people are more careful if they see the chair,” she said.
“It’s never really bothered me to be in the wheelchair,” she said last week. “I’ve always just taken it day by day.”
. . .
Polio is mostly — but not entirely — eradicated today. In the United States, polio hit its height in 1952, when nearly 58,000 people were diagnosed with it. Two years later, the first effective vaccine was developed.
Thanks in part to hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from the Rotary Club since 1985, polio has nearly been eradicated, with cases now occurring in just four countries: Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
