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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnyone else old enough to remember standing in line for your polio shots
Third grade.. I remember it well..
Dr Nancy Sniderman (sp?) made a very scary statement. One I did not think about. If people are not immunizing for something like measles.. will the next out break be polio? Fifty years of hard work to eradicate these horrible diseases.. and here they come again because some a@@ hats do not want to immunize their children and take the responsibly of keeping them out of public venues and infecting others who cannot take the vaccines or are too young or their vaccines could have petered out basically..no longer protecting them as they should..
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notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)I also remember going to school with kids in leg braces as a result of polio.
3catwoman3
(29,327 posts)Polio was a liquid on sugar cubes.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Nasty scab. Had a scar there for years.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)I'd have to ask my sisters we were all born in the late 50's. So if it was available, I'm sure we got it.
Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)and I swear that needle was the size of a knitting needle... but better than polio..I had friends and family who dealt with polio..
winter is coming
(11,785 posts)
Sanity Claws
(22,408 posts)The vaccine left a color on the sugar cube. I think it was a lavender color.
napi21
(45,806 posts)I'm 72 and we got out polio vaccine in school on a little sugar cube. I also remember getting a tuberculosis test that left a little square imprint on your arm. I think if it got inflamed that signaled the disease.
Unfortunately, they didn't have any vaccines for measles neither German nor Rubella, nor one for chickenpox. I got all of them! So did my two boys. I think people are CRAZY for not getting their kids vaccinated. NONE of those diseases are fun to have, and sometimes fatal!
Cleita
(75,480 posts)were crippled by it. I don't think anyone who lived in those days would pass up the vaccine if available after they had seen the suffering children went through with the disease and the crippling results.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)Rose bank Elementary in Chula Vista, CA. I think it was the live dose on the sugar cube the first time. I went to school with children who could barely walk and wore heavy metal braces and used arm supports. Anyone saying no to that would have been viewed with a lot of suspicion and community disapproval.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)probably around 1952, after being exposed to my aunt who almost died from the disease. Later on we got the sugar cubes, too.
madamesilverspurs
(16,506 posts)Also remember going door-to-door with Mom as she collected for the March of Dimes. One of my schoolmates wore leg braces and used crutches, and he missed a lot of school. In the summer, there were days when our community swimming pool was locked because somebody had been diagnosed with polio. When I was in second grade I wound up in the hospital after breaking my arm in four places; I woke up in a ward with ten other kids, only three of us were in beds, the rest were in iron lungs. I remember thinking Okay, first you break your arm, then they stick you in the sideways water heater.
We were all frightened of polio, with good reason. But we all sported dime-sized scars from the small-pox vaccination, we were already familiar with the vax concept. It was kind of amazing when we all lined up for the shots; there were some tears, but none of the kids ran away from the nurses. Interesting time, in hindsight. And it's utterly appalling that there are those today who choose to believe thoroughly debunked research; what a terrible price will be paid for such stupidity. Readily available information should be a reliable prophylactic against such thinking; should be, but some people make the choice to remain ignorant -- and more's the pity.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)And, as in infant in 1957, I received my small pox vaccine in my thigh. I don't know if there was a specific reason why I was vaccinated at birth for small pox because my brother and sister, born 1 and 2 years after me, both received their small pox vaccines when they were 3 or 4 in their upper left arms.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)And her smallpox scar was huge on her upper arm. She had them give me mine on my hip.
Hekate
(100,133 posts)... at a flu vaccination clinic for seniors. The head nurse called over one of the student nurses to point out my scar and educate her on what it was for. I didn't mind at all.
That business with waking up in the iron lung ward must have been really scary for you. They must have been hard up for space to have done that.
I do remember that every single school had a few kids in heavy leg braces. I always feel I must point out (though not to you, obviously) that there were no kids in wheelchairs because no schools had ramps or any other accommodations for those who couldn't manage stairs and other obstacles. Quadriplegics ... ah well. One of our neighbor ladies had gotten polio at the age of 19 and was dependent on her brother's wife for every detail of life. 
Polio still exists in the world at large. Health aid workers keep trying to get to the back of beyond in places like Pakistan and Africa, but in those places ignorance and conspiracy theories kill not just kids but health aid workers as well -- because a significant number have been murdered for their efforts. So here we are in the US with parents who think all vaccinations are dangerous, and there is the big wide world where polio has not been wiped out. I shudder to think of some international traveller arriving in Florida's Disney World next time.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)In the 2014 measles outbreak the majority of cases traced back to a person who acquired the virus overseas (and about half of all cases traced to the Philippines.) I haven't seen a determination of the source for the Disneyland cluster yet, but chances are good that it will also trace to someone who had recently traveled from a country where there's a significant outbreak.
Want to make the anti-vaxxers irrelevant? Eradicate the disease worldwide. Smallpox is essentially gone in the wild. We have the means but apparently not the desire to stop measles the same way.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)It's that Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and chickenpox can become endemic within the US again.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)Ignoring the effective strategy employed with smallpox in favor of focusing on the handful of Americans who don't vaccinate themselves or their children is mind-numbingly short sighted and insular.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)the threat of these diseases, which were once eliminated until anti-vaxxer asshats cropped up, becoming endemic again.
It's idiotic to focus on the global picture when a first world nation is falling to third world endemic nation status in vaccinations because enough asshats are breaking herd immunity.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)Smallpox is the model for addressing this threat. IIRC there's already a worldwide 80% immunization rate on rubeola. Get it to 95% and the problem is solved.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)That's why.
KatyaR
(3,638 posts)I don't remember, my mom was a teacher and she may have brought me to school to get the vaccine. The county health nurse came to the school and gave shots, etc., every year. This was the mid-60s.
Demit
(11,238 posts)Long line of little baby boomers. Down the hatch!
nitpicker
(7,153 posts)I'm sure I had the vaccine, but would have to dig out my immunization records to check when.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Anyone else remember that?
Edited because I just saw that many other posters DO remember that!
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Nowadays there would be a fit about giving kids that much sugar!
I've never been a sugar fan, and it took me forever to suck that down!
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)Hell, at 61 I still like most sweets-just in reasonable moderation. And chocolate...oh, sweet Jesus I love chocolate
cwydro
(51,308 posts)Remember those? They should have put the vaccine in those!
We used to eat powdered koolaid!
Maybe that's why I hate candy now lol...
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)I couldn't begin to estimate how much koolaid I went through as a kid. It was cheap and easy and we considered it a treat! Even better was to freeze an ice cube tray of koolaid like popsickles on a hot summer day.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)I also loved the big Sugar Daddy bars....is that what they were called? A big old hunk of caramel on a stick?
And candy cigarettes. Lol, if we were really in the money, we'd buy the candy CIGARS.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)Wax lips and wax coke bottles with sugar liquid in them? I loved those as a kid.
Phentex
(16,708 posts)rolls right off the tongue 
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)
Nobody ever minded sugar cube day.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)3catwoman3
(29,327 posts)...lining up for the sugar cubes in kindergarten.
Kingofalldems
(40,255 posts)and then sugar cubes twice.
NOLALady
(4,003 posts)I also remember the schoolmates with braces.
MineralMan
(151,180 posts)
displacedtexan
(15,696 posts)I was always envious of the kids who got the sugar cubes.
Brother Buzz
(39,864 posts)We were living in the epicenter of a scary hot polio cluster and my parents made a special appointment for the new polio vaccine. The locals and health officials mistakenly blamed the tidal wetlands in our backyards for the cluster and bumped us to the front of the waiting list for the polio serum that was in very short supply at the time.
Years later we also had the sugar cube treatment.
FLyellowdog
(4,276 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Either first or second grade...which would have been 61 or so.
blue neen
(12,465 posts)They gave them out at the brand new elementary school on Sunday afternoons. Most families only had one car back in those days, so they scheduled the sugar cube vaccinations for the weekends when dads were home from work!
My, how things have changed!
Laffy Kat
(16,947 posts)And getting sugar cubes. My sister and I thought it was the best thing ever.
truegrit44
(332 posts)My mother was an RN and she volunteered with the Red Cross. They had a big tent set up in downtown Long Beach and she was working handing out sugar cubes. I don't think I ever got a shot for polio just the sugar cubes.
Panich52
(5,829 posts)Michael Benedum had a thing f/ mu hometoen & built a wonderful civic center (ice rink/basketball court, pool, library, small auditorium). Iremember standing in line f/ sugar cube. Tho Mom said I got a 'small measles' vax in mid 50s, only other I remember is smallpox vax w/ that plastic cup we had to wear a few days.
I've no doubt that if a chickenpox or mumps vax had been available, we'd have gotten it. Mom wasn't at all stupid.
Raster
(21,010 posts)
longship
(40,416 posts)Because I got it. Later the live vaccine was given out on a sugar cube. I got the jab first, and then two doses via sugar cubes later. All were distributed at the local elementary school which I attended.
At the time we got that injection, there were students at school who wore leg braces, used crutches, and sometimes some who just disappeared one day -- they just stopped coming to school.
People were afraid, with good reason. Polio is a bad thing. So is measles.
Get your vaccines. Make sure your kiddies do, too.
gordianot
(15,769 posts)As I remember you had to have a booster. Years later the sugar cube was administered. I also remember my mother saying no public swimming pools even after vaccine.
Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)where we used to swim.. it was an oversized pond, but did have life guards..and they closed it permanently to swimmers..
LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)polio while in the Navy during WWII. He was medically discharged and walked with a pronounced limp the rest of his life. He was on his way to a Naval career when polio interferred. He was bitter about it the rest of his life.
The polio vaccine was a godsend.
PasadenaTrudy
(3,998 posts)and I can't remember a polio vaccine. I must have had one, right? My parents are deceased so I can't ask them.
csziggy
(34,189 posts)A girl that lived down the street had polio and was not able to come out and play with the other kids our age for several years after we got the polio vaccine in school. Eventually, she was able to come to school with braces on, then years of therapy later she was able to walk without the braces. But she was a constant reminder to all of us, children and parents, what could happen without vaccinations.
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)at school and shots at the doctors office a couple times.
dem in texas
(2,681 posts)I was in high school in Dallas and the school system bused the kids over to the health department for the shot. Everyone was so thankful that a cure for polio had finally been found.
I remember the March of Dimes was founded to fund research for a polio cure. When you went to the movie, the lights would come on and a collection plate would be passed down the aisles for donations for the March of Dimes. Kids took donations to school. Everyone pulled together to help find a cure. Where has this feeling of working together as one country gone?
Hekate
(100,133 posts)...holding their kids by the hand and tears be damned. I was there with my parents, my younger sister, and two younger brothers.
That last big polio epidemic scared the bejaysus out of any parent with even two brain cells to rub together, and this must have seemed like a gift from God Almighty.
That memory is the reason I cannot for the life of me understand this reversion to superstition and faith-healing. Want to keep your kid from getting strep throat? Don't forget the bag of garlic tied around their neck. But wait, there's more. For only another $39.99 this fine bottle of snake oil can be yours, guaranteed to cure Grandma's rheumatism and Uncle's cancer. 
pipi_k
(21,020 posts)remember sugar cubes.
My sisters and I didn't get the sugar cubes.
Just the liquid in these teeny tiny little paper cups
PS...I also noticed that some people remember getting their smallpox vaccination. I have the scar on my arm but (thankfully) do not remember getting the shot.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)Then it was changed to injections which were so bad
Had smallpox shot too but it was nothing.
rusty fender
(3,428 posts)And I also remember that you could not enroll in school without your proof of vaccines and couldn't step on your college campus without having proof of being vaccinated.
Euphoria
(455 posts)that all of us in line were very special because my teacher said how lucky we were to receive this new approach to a serious disease. I just knew, even then, that science, technology and this commitment to helping people would make the world better. Still can't figure out how the love of hate, hurting others and disrespect for life made a comeback.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)On State street in Boise.
Went and stood in line at Well's Department Store on Overland Road in the Hillcrest Shopping Mall in 1966 for the "booster shot" sugar cube 5 years later.
One of my dad's younger sisters contracted polio as a young girl in the late 1930's.
It scared the hell out of his entire family.
So, it was very important to him that his own family, including himself, all get the vaccine after it was invented.
He knew about FDR being crippled by polio, as both of his parents had voted for FDR ever since he first ran for President in 1932.
My aunt was very lucky, as she wasn't crippled by her bout with polio.
But, she did walk with a limp for the rest of her life.
Yet, with the great legs she had, nobody hardly noticed.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)At any rate, at my school they got us in the lunch line. At first, they used mini needles that barely broke the skin surface. Later, they switched to some machine that was like a fuel injector, only instead of fuel it was injecting a vaccine without a needle.
olddots
(10,237 posts)
prairierose
(2,147 posts)in first or second grade. I can't remember if it was a polio shot or a TB test, maybe both at different times.. My family went to the Dr together in 1961 and all took the polio vaccine on sugar cubes together. We had gone home to the Midwest and Mom insisted we go to the only Dr she trusted at that time.
But I can't remember if that was my first or second polio vaccination. I had the smallpox vaccination a couple of times. Once when I was a child that I do not remember but I can see the scar, and when I finished high school, it was common ,where we lived, for students heading off to college to get a second vaccination.
My mother had the smallpox vaccination on her thigh. When she was heading off to college, that was the common site for girls to get the small pox vaccination. She has a large scar there. That would have been about 1949 or 1950.
MFM008
(20,042 posts)1966 to 69 sometime in there.
oh we used to be tested for TB frequently to.
ladyVet
(1,587 posts)It would have been before 1963, because my sister wasn't born yet. I think I was four and my brother was almost two (I was born in 1958). We waited a long time because I think the entire town was there. Everybody was talking about knowing someone with polio, and how scared they were of the disease. They lived with seeing FDR and the result of him having polio, also.
I have no problem with staying on the government's ass to make sure vaccines are safe and effective, but to risk a child suffering and possibly being disabled or worse from a preventable disease is insane. People who haven't lived with the consequences that our generation and those who came before us have just don't get it, I guess. I hope they never have to live in those times.
By the way, hello to my fellow old farts! There sure are a lot of us here. 
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)and I swear that was the biggest needle I have ever seen in my life.. I was in tears before I even got the shot..
LeftishBrit
(41,451 posts)I think it was required for travel. I had it the first time as a baby, and don't remember it.
Sunday morning after church drove to local a public grade school, sugar cube in a white paper cup......memories
Hobo
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)followed by the sugar cube in a grammar school.
ProfessorGAC
(76,606 posts)I'm 58 and i honestly don't remember whether we got the Salk shot or the Sabin oral vaccine. But, i do remember standing in line on the stage at the school gym and waiting until the lady in white said come on ahead.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)It was delivered by something that looked like this:
Scuba
(53,475 posts)itcfish
(1,834 posts)in Public School for a sugar cube with the Polio vaccine
Paladin
(32,354 posts)That was a long time ago....but I think I would have remembered if any of my classmates didn't get those treatments, on account of some political or religious belief their parents. We're really regressing in this country.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)in our area and the line was long. No argument back then.
shanti
(21,798 posts)1963ish? One of my uncles contracted polio in the 50's, which withered one of his legs. It didn't stop him though. He loved to swim and water ski.
RobinA
(10,478 posts)at Stewart Junior High School for a sugar cube. I don't remember what year, but my sister was there and she was born in '60, so it was after that. I was born in 1958. I think my parents got sugar cubes, too, but that's fuzzy. Neither had polio but my uncle did and they remember the quarantines. No one in my mother's house got polio except her brother, so it must not be super easy to transmit.
love_me_some_pickles
(35 posts)
Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)the oral vaccine started to be used wide spread then.. before that.. it was injections only
love_me_some_pickles
(35 posts)
Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)I was just writing to someone else.. that that was the biggest needle I have ever seen in my life.. and you could see at least three kids ahead of you the shot being given.. I mean I am glad I got it..but wow that one hurt!
sarge43
(29,173 posts)Remember very well when the polio vax first came out. My mother grabbed me and out the door like a cannon ball. I think my feet hit the ground twice between home and the doc's office.
Thank you Mom for being one smart lady.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)and earlier, a smallpox shot and one heckuva scab (Mom said I searched for that scab when it fell off).
I also got measles, mumps, chicken pox. It was pre-vaccination days, and in those times, folks would bring their kids over to be exposed to the virus (ostensibly to "play"
.
GreyGhost47
(4 posts)I was in third grade and we lined up in the gym to get our polio shots. that would have been in 1956.
That was the Salk polio vaccine. We got another shot about a month later and then another one in
a few more months. In junior high, 1962 - the Sabin vaccine came out and on Sunday afternoon after
church, we would go to our local school and get our sugar cubes. In 1963 the nurses gave us our
measles shot. I also got a smallpox vaccination -booster- in junior high. We all lined up to get our
vaccinations back then. I don't remember any kids having anti-vaxer parents.