Childhood Memories # 7 Herman Keefer Hospital (part four)
I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving!
My first room seemed crowded to me, but I didn’t mind because there was a baby close by that I could watch. For me what could be better than that! I remember being right next to a big picture window looking out at the hallway. The first test they did was a spinal tap. It wasn’t bad, just a few pin pricks. And the results were conclusive, Polio! It was spreading. It looked as though by morning, I would be in an “Iron Lung”. (A big tube that you fit inside, except for your head.) A pump would put pressure on the lungs and ‘breath’ for you. That is what the Doctors told my parents. Expect to see me in an iron lung when they returned the next morning. But God had other plans. My mother tells me, “When Dad and I got home, we knelt and prayed, giving you to the Lord. We told Him, ‘No matter what happens to her, we will serve You’.” Mother said, she had peace for the first time since I had gotten sick. She had a good nights rest. When they returned the next morning, they were greeted by the doctors. My fever had broken. The polio stopped spreading, no iron lung. My Dad and Mom asked what time the fever broke, it was the exact time they had knelt in prayer committing me to the Lord. I spent the next three/four months in the hospital.