Nancy’s Vaccine Story
A guest post from PHAN supporter Nancy Park, Chico, CA
The year was 1955. I was 13 months old and my mother was feeding me on a spring morning while watching “The Today Show” on a black and white television with a tiny screen. Big news was announced – Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine against polio had been found to be effective and safe. It soon would be available to the public. My mother, a public heath nurse, broke down and wept. This development meant I would be spared the ravages of polio, because she knew that vaccines work.
As a nurse, my mother had seen first-hand the devastation that polio caused, especially to young children. In 1952 alone, there were 57,000 cases reported, including more than 3,000 deaths.
Some children had to be put into huge metal tubes called iron lungs, with only their heads outside of the tube. The iron lungs breathed for them when their polio-damaged lungs could not. Others suffered from paralysis, high feverA common symptom of infection marked by elevated body temperature., joint and back pain, and extreme sensitivity to touch.
The most famous polio patient was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The future president was stricken in 1921 at the age of 39. After a long and arduous recovery period, and despite exceptional determination on Roosevelt’s part, he was never able to walk unassisted again.
I still remember lining up at the Butte County Public Health building on Oleander Ave., across from Chico Junior High, to get a dose of the vaccine in the form of a sugar cube. It seemed to me – I was just a toddler – that every child in Chico was there that day!
By the time I graduated from Chico High School, in 1972, only 29 polio cases were reported in the U.S., including two deaths. Polio had been all but eradicated in the United States. Because vaccines work!
However, when I was growing up there were no vaccines for other potentially-dangerous childhood diseases – the most common of which were chicken pox, measles, rubella (or “German measles”), and mumps. Rubella was especially feared, as a pregnant woman exposed to it had a higher chance of her baby being born with birth defects. I had all those diseases, as did most of my classmates.
I also proved susceptible to respiratory infections such as colds and flu. When I was 18 months old, I developed viral pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. According to my parents, I almost died. This may have lowered my immune system.
With all those illnesses hitting me, one after the other, I missed a lot of school. I was a good student, but there was a discussion between my parents and my teacher about repeating a grade. I managed to avoid that.
Today, there are vaccinations for all these diseases. With the MMR vaccine, we achieved herd immunityWhen a significant portion of a population becomes immune to a disease, reducing its spread. and nearly eradicated measles, mumps, and chicken pox. However, as the number of parents deciding not to vaccinate their children rises, measles has popped up again. According to the Center for Disease Control, there have been 1,454 measles cases in 2025 in the United States, as of September 9. These have resulted in 180 hospitalizations and three deaths
As an older adult, I’ve benefited from many additional vaccines, for COVID, pneumonia, and shingles. Beginning with Dr. Salk, I am grateful for the scientists who have conducted medical research to develop vaccines, because we know that vaccines work. Without them, I might not have made it to my current age of 71.
