the three children managed
to extinguish the fire with pine bows. Tired, but not exhausted, they then sailed
home for more
strenuous activity — a jog of roughly two miles to their favorite pond
for a quick swim before supper.
The thirty-nine year old Roosevelt was obviously in good health and used to a vigorous
life. But back at the cottage, as this long summer day drew to a close, he felt a
sudden chill overtake him. Too tired to take his supper with the family, or even to
bother to change out of his swimming suit, FDR sat reading for a time. He then
informed his wife Eleanor that perhaps he was coming down with a bit of "lumbago,"
and wearily climbed the stairs to go to bed. By morning FDR had a fever of 102 degrees,
and all the strength seemed to have gone out of his aching legs. As night fell,
the pain spread to his neck and back. Worse still, he found that he couldn't move
his legs at all.
FDR did not know it yet, but at some point in the weeks prior to his departure
for Campobello, he had contracted poliomyelitis, a crippling viral disease
that would leave him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
It took some time, however, before the family became aware of the seriousness
of his illness, for the initial diagnosis by both the local family doctor and
by a second physician brought in to examine FDR was incorrect. Finally, as the
days passed, and FDR made little real improvement, the family brought in Dr.
Robert Lovett, a noted specialist on infantile paralysis, who, after examining
FDR, broke the devastating news that he had indeed contracted polio.
Eleanor and Franklin now faced the most serious challenge of their lives. In
September, the family returned to New York, where FDR hoped to make a full
recovery. But it was not to be. There was some improvement in the muscles of
his neck and lower back, but after months of treatment, it was clear to FDR's
attending physician at New York's Presbyterian Hospital that the paralysis in his
legs was permanent. FDR would never walk again unassisted.
FDR categorically refused to accept the notion that he was, in effect, a paraplegic.
He was determined to walk again, and for the next seven years he threw himself into
a daily routine of exercise and therapy. Day in and day out, both at his townhouse
on 65th street in New York, and during his visits to Hyde Park, he practiced
"walking" with crutches and the heavy steel leg braces that he had been fitted
with after leaving Presbyterian Hospital. At one point he even decided that he must
walk from the family home in Hyde Park to the end of the driveway — a distance of a
quarter of a mile. Sweating profusely from the strain, while chatting happily with a
friend or servant as he made his way along, FDR tried to reach the end of the drive
again and again. He never made it, although he once reached the halfway point.
FDR also sought out innumerable cures: electric currents, ultraviolet light,
massage, mineral baths — whatever might improve his atrophied legs. He also
consulted a number of other physicians and therapists in a vain effort to
revitalize his muscles. This search for a "cure" would continue for the rest
of his life. It reflected, in a very real sense, FDR's ever-present optimism
and his refusal to accept the notion that he was permanently disabled.
|
