Five Pages a Day Read Free

spend more time in my room.
    As I waited for his visit, my leg itched. I scratched the itch, then realized what I had done. I scratched again, to be sure I really could do it. The fingers on my left hand moved back and forth.
    â€œI can move my hand!” I yelled.
    The nurses came running, followed by Dr. Bevis. Triumphantly, I demonstrated my new skill.
    â€œCan she really do it?” Tommy asked.
    â€œYes,” said the nurse.
    â€œHooray!” yelled Tommy.
    Dr. Bevis beamed.
    No Olympic athlete ever felt more exultant at winning a medal than I did over moving the fingers on one hand.
    Slowly, I regained the use of my muscles. First my fingers moved, then my arms. Next I could sit up, and then I was able to feed myself.
    A month later, I was transferred back to the Sheltering Arms where I was placed in a room with four girls my age. A common enemy creates strong bonds, and Dorothy, Alice, Shirley, and Renée soon became my best friends. They knew what it was like to battle polio; my friends back home did not.
    Visitors were allowed on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. The one hundred miles between my home in Austin and the hospital in Minneapolis made Wednesdays out of the question, but my parents came every Sunday, regardless of the weather or road conditions.
    I was the only girl in the room who got visitors. Dorothy’s farm family couldn’t leave their chores long enough to drive several hours each way; Renée’s parents and Shirley’s also lived too far away to come.
    And then there was Alice. She had been at the Sheltering Arms for ten years. She had gotten polio before Sister Kenny developed her treatments, and as a result she had shriveled arms and legs as well as the condition known as “dropfoot,” which prevented her from standing. When Alice’s parents learned that she was permanently disabled, they realized they couldn’t care for her and the rest of their children, too, so at the age of three Alice had become a ward of the state. She pretended not to mind, but when I heard Alice’s story, I knew there were worse things than being paralyzed.
    My parents soon included my roommates in their visits. Dad took home movies of us, then showed the movies the next Sunday. Mother brought surprises and treats for each girl. My brother, Art, came from college and joked with everyone. The other girls looked forward to my family’s visits as much as I did.
    Friends and neighbors in Austin, hearing about the polio girls who didn’t get company, loaded my parents with potato chips and peanuts, brownies and cookies, all of which we stashed under my bed.
    Before long I got a wheelchair and learned to push myself around. I named the wheelchair Silver after the horse in the “Lone Ranger.” To the dismay of the staff, I learned to make Silver rear on his hind legs. I raced down the hall as fast as I could, then slammed on the brakes, causing the small front wheels to lift off the floor while I balanced on the large rear ones.
    The nurses warned me that this was dangerous, but each time the other kids asked me to do my trick, I waited until the grownups were out of sight and then tore down the hall and “popped a wheelie” in front of the door, where my roommates could see me and applaud.
    The wheelchair became my ticket to independence. After I learned to get into it and then back into bed by myself, I even passed out cookies in the dark, when we were supposed to be asleep.
    On my thirteenth birthday, I sat in Silver and blew out the candles on the chocolate cake that Mother had brought. I had only one wish: to walk by myself.
    My physical therapist, Miss Ballard, became my personal cheerleader, encouraging me to stretch and to work at my exercises. She believed I would walk someday, and her confidence made me believe it, too.
    The friendship of my roommates also sustained me. We often sang together after lights out at night. We told jokes and