She was 8 and in a hospital ward with other polio victims. Then she couldn’t breathe

This is what Carol Norris Vincent remembers.

After her parents rushed the then-8-year-old to KC’s General Hospital, she was placed in the same area as her sister, a below ground ward with dozens of kids. The windows were high up on the walls looking north out onto Locust Street.

During the days, fretful parents paced on the grass outside, peeking in and down to wave at their children through the iron bars intended to prevent the escape of the ward’s previous occupants — criminals and the mentally ill.

She remembers the nurses and doctors moving quickly, themselves tired, harried and nervous. When doctors and nurses inserted a needle into her sister’s spine to confirm the polio diagnosis, one nurse told her “Shut up! Quit crying! Shut up!”

At night, the nurses would orient the 20 or 30 oversized metal cribs so the kids could see through the windows and watch the lights on the Power & Light Building downtown change from white to blue to red to green to amber, a nightly beacon of color outside the stark, gray hospital.

The kids didn’t talk to one another very much. Some just couldn’t, as the virus had paralyzed their vocal cords. Others were simply in so much pain they could only whimper, cry or long for their families.

On young Carol’s second or third day at the hospital, she couldn’t breathe.

Not in a stuffy nose sense. Her airway wasn’t constricted, like with an asthma attack.

No, she was physically unable to draw air into her body. Like she’d just exhaled and her body was stuck there.

“When I couldn’t breathe, that was the most awful part of the whole thing,” she said. “Anybody who can’t breathe will tell you it is horrifying.”

Try it: Exhale, hold your breath and imagine being an 8-year-old separated from your mom and dad.

She remembers trying to yell for a nurse, but without breath she couldn’t make a sound. At that moment, she would have been happy to get the attention of anyone. Even the mean nurse who had told her sister to shut up.

Today, Vincent, 80, is a chaplain at the Groves in Independence. For the most part, she and her sister recovered. It wasn’t easy.

The girls both grew up clumsy, in her words, though she didn’t know if that could be attributed to polio.

“Maybe we inherited that from our dad, I don’t know,” she said, chuckling.

After the girls were released, their mother massaged the girls twice as long each day as recommended. Other treatments included placing soaking wool blankets in boiling hot water and laying them on patients.

For Vincent, those moments without breath were the worst.

“We were scared, but our parents were petrified that we were going to die. Mother said it was the worst time of her life, with two children with polio.”

This story was originally published August 19, 2018 at 5:30 AM.