Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio

Blurb

Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio is a memoir of author Peg Kehret's childhood experience of polio. The book won the Golden Kite Award.
In September 1949, Peg collapses at school. She goes home with a high fever and around midnight, she starts to vomit. Her parents take to the hospital where she is diagnosed with three different kinds of polio. She spends a little time at Sheltering Arms before she is transferred to University Hospital because she needs a respirator. Peg was placed under an oxygen tent to help her breathe a little easier. After a few days, she is allowed to move out of isolation but all of the things in her room are burned because they may contain the virus. Her new room has a roommate named Tommy who is hooked up to an iron lung. Peg reads to him when she’s feeling better and they listen to “The Lone Ranger” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Everyday, she undergoes the hot pack part of the Kenny treatment. After she starts to recover, the nurse she dubs “Mrs. Crab” does the stretching exercises. After she improves, she is moved back to the Sheltering Arms hospital where she rooms with four other girls that have polio.