Polio and the Race for a Vaccine

The Coronavirus not only took us by surprise in winter, but we seem to have lost the spring. It canceled weeks of our scheduled lives: vacations, business trips, conferences, weddings, and birthdays have vanished in the confusing fog that has become enduring COVID-19. We are fated to remember these past two or three months, and more that will follow. How we first processed the news, what we lost and grieved, and where we socially isolated, will be memories we share.

I was born in 1952, the summer that the notorious poliomyelitis epidemic approached its most significant number of cases – over 59,000. Of course, I recollect none of those first few years of life and how the terror of polio may have touched my family and friends. I have no idea if I received the Salk vaccine, by injection, in the 50s. I may have, instead, received the sugar cube vaccine in the early 60s. Polio only influenced my life minimally. My high school boyfriend’s mother was a 1952 polio survivor just after her youngest child was born. She walked with crutches due to paralysis caused by the virus. My stepbrother contracted polio around the age of 5 or 6 and had constraints of neck movement since surviving the illness.

Polio had been around for years before the 20th century. An outbreak of the epidemic in Vermont in 1894 resulted in 132 cases. In 1916 it struck with a vengeance, particularly in New York City, and specifically to children under the age of 5. Some New York City children with polio were isolated in sanitariums, away from their loved ones that year.

Outbreaks waxed and waned the next thirty years, striking without warning from June to September. Parents grasped their children close – the usual summer activities like birthday and slumber parties were abandoned if cases were prevalent. Playgrounds were sometimes empty. Movie theaters and swimming pools – normal activities for children of the times – were closed. Fear swept through cities, communities, and neighborhoods. In some towns, schools were closed in early June or remained closed in September.

At the end of WWII, US soldiers’ return and the baby boom brought a surge in polio. After 1948, cases rose each summer by 5,000. In 1952, the summer I was an infant, poliomyelitis cases crested with over 59,000 cases. 3,145 people died in the United States. Survivors of the disease suffered long-lasting effects – 15,000 people a year suffered some paralysis from polio. Some lived in iron lungs, while others endured only limited movements of the neck or extremities.

72% of polio cases produced little or no symptoms or resulted in full recovery. Accidental deaths claimed ten times more lives than polio, cancer three times as many. However, panicked and terrified parents, apprehensive for their children acquiring the virus, urged the government in the early 1950s to find a vaccine or a cure. Parents wanted to keep their children safe.

The story of the race to find a vaccine is genuinely astonishing and has parallels today in a rush to find a vaccine for COVID-19. And it involves the most prominent polio survivor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR was 39 years old when he contracted polio on summer vacation on Campobello Island in 1921. He was paralyzed from the waist down and remained so for the rest of his life. It is debated that Roosevelt may have actually suffered from an undiagnosed auto-immune disease and not polio; however, what is not disputed is that President Roosevelt, in 1938 at the age of 56, founded NFIP, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

This private foundation became the March of Dimes Foundation and, with its 3,100 chapters, funded not only hospitalizations and treatments but rehabilitation for those struck down with the virus. The March of Dimes efforts raised millions every year in the late 40s and early 50s, eventually funding both the Salk and Sabin vaccine efforts. (Today, the mission of the March of Dimes is to eradicate birth defects.) Through NFIP studies, it was learned that there are three strains of the poliovirus and that it entered the body through the mouth and digestive system.

In 1943, the NFIP awarded a grant to investigate polio to Dr. Albert Sabin conducted parts of his studies of polio in North Africa. He returned home to develop a live or active vaccine containing forms of the poliovirus. This oral, or sugar cube vaccine was tested on millions of people worldwide, but it would take nearly 20 years to perfect. Eventually, Sabin’s vaccine became an effective one, but not before Dr. Jonas Salk developed the dead vaccine given by injection.

The NFIP pinned its highest hope and the most funding on Salk, a researcher at the University of Pittsburg. Americans desired a vaccine, and Salk focused on developing it quickly. Salk and his team worked around the clock on this inactive vaccine. In 1954, when I was just two years old, 1.8 million older schoolchildren called “polio pioneers” lined up for the trials of the vaccine (or the placebo) given by injection.

Less than a year after the experiments began, on April 12, 1955, highly anticipated news was announced to the world. It was the tenth anniversary of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Salk vaccine was a success. However, it was not without a considerable hiccup – tainted vaccines, produced by Cutter Labs in California, caused polio cases and deaths. The vaccinations were halted at once, causing alarm and confusion. Eight days later, the US Surgeon General allowed vaccinations to continue under more rigorous control of manufacturing. And parents clamored for doses for their children.

Efforts to totally eradicate poliomyelitis have taken more than a half century to realize the eliminate the virus across the world. Type 2 of the poliovirus was eliminated by 2015. On October 24, 2019, the World Health Organization declared that Type 3 of the poliovirus had been eradicated worldwide. Only Type 1 remains a risk. WHO hopes that polio will be totally eliminated by 2023.

The library’s streaming service, Kanopy, offers a 1998 documentary, A Paralyzing Fear, narrated by actress Olympia Dukakis. It is an insightful and comprehensive look at the virus and the rush for the vaccine. The American Experience series (available online at PBS.org) includes a one-hour documentary, The Polio Crusade. It chronicles not only the disease and the vaccines but the fear that gripped the town of Wytheville, Virginia, in the summer of 1950, a community hard hit by the virus. The Polio Crusade is partially based on one of the most acclaimed books on the poliovirus and vaccine – Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (2005). Both that book and The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman (2017) are available in Norwood and can be requested for curbside delivery as of May 26, 2020, during the COVID-19 closure of the library.

Delivery of physical library materials (books, DVDs, and audiobooks) in the Minuteman Library Network begins was halted in mid-March 2020. Until it begins again there are various other eBooks and documentaries about polio that are available online with your library card through Kanopy, Hoopla, and RB Digital’s Great Books.

The polio epidemic, spanning more than 40 years in America, was a fearful time, not unlike the recent COVID-19 pandemic that reached the United States this past winter. While polio mostly affected those under five years old before the early 1950s, no one knew who it would strike. Like today’s COVID-19 epidemic, the race to find a vaccine with give hope that families could finally wrestle successfully against the disease.

Heists: Feathers, Maps and Works of Art

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the April 30, 2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin.

Our library closed in mid-March due to COVID, but our librarians are still writing weekly columns for the Transcript. We directed our focus on writing about library services beyond the walls of the library building. In this unfamiliar, unprecedented time, we are reinventing our professional lives by working from home. We are committed to teaching our non-library users to sign up for a library card online.

We've shared our news about the Chat with Us box on our website that is staffed 9-5 on weekdays. (After-hours chats are addressed directly to our adult services librarian's email where they are responded to the next morning.) We are expanding our services with more robust 24/7 WiFi available in the parking lot. We are offering online book discussions, children's storytimes, and other innovative programs by way of Zoom, YouTube, or Facebook Live.

In addition, we are focusing on the library's digital collection - books, audiobooks, movies, magazines, and music available through our digital services – OverDrive (and the Libby app), Hoopla, Kanopy, Flipster and our newest offering, RB Digital.

If you appreciate non-fiction crime and intrigue, I have three excellent suggestions for you that are available as OverDrive Advantage ebooks – digital copies that are shared only with Norwood cardholders. You won't have to wait in line with other Massachusetts library users outside of Norwood to check them out.

Two years ago, in the winter of 2018, I attended the American Library Association MidWinter Meeting in Denver, Colorado. As usual, I registered for a morning session of Penguin-Random House book talks. At these events for librarians, we are offered a selection ARCs (otherwise known as advanced reading copies, pre-press copies, or galleys.) These pre-publication copies are incomplete in that they need a final proofread, and sometimes a final cover design. Reviewers are always given copies of ARCs – especially those who will write comments that will appear on the back of the final book. Publishers do, however, always want to get books into the hands of librarians who are going to suggest books to readers. They are hoping that we read them with a great recommendation.

Growing in a Fallow Time

Kirstie David is a Literacy and Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the April 23, 2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin.

The wisdom limned in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes – “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” – is common enough to be known outside of religious circles. Through the thousands of years that mankind has been engaged in agriculture, we understand that there is a time when we plant seeds, a time to harvest, and even a time when the ground is resting, fallow.

Nobody I know put the precept of a time for every purpose into practice more than my mother. She was a science teacher and was deeply dedicated to the job. During the school year she would often follow a full day of classes by offering after-school help, then grade homework, tests and lab reports in the evenings. Yet she was also an outdoor person at heart who delighted in summer breaks when she could work in the yard, cultivating her own wonderland of florae. On rainy days when we were stuck indoors she made good use of her time, bustling around the house and getting chores done. All the while she’d cast glances out the window, waiting for her chance to resume playing in the dirt. If just one fraction of the gloom lifted, she would take notice of it and utter a favorite and oft-used phrase: “Looks like it’s brightening up out there.” This habit said a lot about her. She was the type of person perpetually waiting for things to get better so that she could celebrate that circumstance and share it with others.

Stranger Than Fiction

Nicole Guerra-Coon is the Assistant Children’s Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her column in the April 16, 2020 edition of the Transcript.

When I was going to college, I worked part time in an independent bookstore.  I loved being surrounded by books and meeting interesting people (like my future husband,) and most of my paycheck went right back into the store.  At the time, I was really only interested in reading fiction.  I spent most of my money on fantasy novels - anything by Alice Hoffman, classics I never read in school, young adult books, things suggested by customers and more.  I bought graphic novels, and huge art books (that I didn’t always read), pouring over the images with appreciation.  With a 35% discount, I felt like I needed to take advantage and stock up.

Books Take Me Away

Kate Tigue is the Head of Youth Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the April 9, 2020 edition of the Transcript and Bulletin. 

When this article is published, I will have completed nearly 4  weeks of staying at home during the COVID-19 global pandemic, all while working and parenting full-time. This time hasn’t been easy for anyone. These rapid changes in the way we live, while necessary, have left so many of us anxious, lonely, and pretty claustrophobic. I think I truly understand the sentiment of that old commercial where the overwhelmed woman cries out, “Calgon, take me away!”.

Your Library - Still Open for Business, Virtually

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the April 2,  2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin.

Although we may be reminded lately of the dystopian novel, The Stand by Stephen King, the world has been here before. The 1918 H1N1 flu pandemic (also called the Spanish flu) was the deadliest epidemic of the 20th Century. It spread worldwide during 1918-1919 and was ameliorated by World War I and the crowded conditions in the trenches on the battlefields of the Western Front. “The virus traveled with military personnel from camp to camp.”

Can a Book Heal the World?

Kirstie David is a Literacy and Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the March 26, 2020 edition of the Transcript &  Bulletin.

I recently read a remarkable book. Actually, it was an audiobook narrated by the author, and once I began, I found it hard to stop. While not all narrators are created equally I can confirm that this one is delightful; the soothing cadence of her voice is like a lullaby for the soul.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” should be required reading. I mention this to everyone I’ve told about the book, and nobody asks for whom it should be required. Maybe they assume I mean school children. I actually mean it should be required reading for anyone who wants to live on the planet. Hyperbole? Probably. Yet perhaps a universal playbook is just what we need to heal the fragile ecology of our world.

Falling Between the Cracks

Librarian April Cushing is head of Adult and Information Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column published in the March 19, 2020 issue of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.

I think I’m officially losing it. In this case, “it” refers to pretty much anything of importance I lay hands on. My mother called it carelessness. It’s not a recent affliction with me, but it may be getting worse. It’s definitely getting more frustrating. After my most recent episode, I realize I need to take action.

I come from a long line of losers. My forebears (by marriage) lost waterfront property on the coast of Maine by neglecting to pay the taxes. My immediate loved ones have misplaced everything from wallets to watches, cell phones to shoes, coats to cameras (remember them?). I managed to lose one of my few valuable pieces of jewelry—a single sapphire earring--at my daughter’s wedding in England last year. I beat myself up over that one for days.

Not long ago I got a call from a recycling company in Ohio. Had I left a laptop on an Amtrak train to DC last summer? No, but the daughter to whom I’d lent it had, I discovered. I couldn’t even be mad at her because it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d do. My new friend at the recycling company reset the password and mailed it back to her in Brooklyn, gratis.

A couple months ago I lost my keys. I lent them to one of my kids who borrowed my car and did, in fact, return them. Moments later I sped off to the Cape for the weekend in my trusty, keyless-entry Prius. When I pulled into the Harwich Stop & Shop and tried to lock the car containing my priceless (to me) pup, the key fob was nowhere to be found. I checked pockets, purse, on the seat, under the seat, around the seat. Nothing. But since I was able to restart the car by simply pushing the ignition switch, I wasn’t too worried. The key, with its proximity sensor, had to be nearby. When I got to the house I turned off the car, then immediately tried powering it back up. Upon hearing it purr to life I unpacked the Prius and figured I’d find the key in the light of day.

Finding a Treasure Trove

Nancy Ling is the Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Nancy’s column in the March 12, 2020 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.

When someone you love is suddenly gone from your life, there are obvious things that you will miss—their captivating smile, their warm embrace, that goofy joke they told at every family gathering.

Not surprisingly there are other heartaches that we cannot anticipate or measure—things we never imagined that we would long for after a loved one passes away. This was the case with my father. This April it will have been two years since he departed and I am shocked at how quickly we have forgotten some of his character traits and idiosyncrasies. For a while, I couldn’t find any recordings of his voice, and I was distraught. Yes, I remembered exactly how he would say “Hello Nana-Banana” when he gave me a hug, but I wanted to remember more, each intonation. Thankfully, several friends and family members found recordings on their phones that they shared with me, one even highlighted his laughter which was a treasure to hear.

The Printers' Daughter

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the March 5, 2020 edition of the Transcript &Bulletin.

This past week, I was yanking some memento out of the bottom of a long-forgotten box, when a small metal plate slipped out of a booklet. It was a three by one-and-one-half inch engraved plate - a metal negative of a photo of my mother. I remembered the photograph well. It accompanied an article in a printed newspaper or newsletter published over a half-century ago. 

In the early 1960s, Mrs. Carolyn Fitzgerald had been elected to the office of President of the Women's Auxiliary to the Typographical Union in Oakland, California. I flipped the metal right to left and revealed an image of a beautiful, perfectly coiffed young mother in her thirties. Flipping it again, of the metal plate exposed the negative image of the same photo.

That day, I was reminded of the newspaper printing business that defined my childhood. In 1959, my soon-to-be stepfather left his job as a typesetter at the Worcester Telegram and Evening Gazette. He and his brother, Bill Fitzgerald, had heard there were plenty of printing opportunities, particularly typesetting, in the newspaper industry in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Like pioneers, they were the advance team, moving to the west coast, getting decent-paying union jobs, and setting up apartments to await their families. My mother, my brother, and I made the transatlantic journey from Boston to San Francisco on TWA and settled into that unique college town called Berkeley.

Dispatches in Sandpaper: Send 20-Grit

Liz Reed is an Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz’s column in the February 27, 2020 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.

                When you buy a fixer-upper house, sooner or later you need to start fixing it up before it can feel like home. And if you’re fixing the place up on a shoestring budget, you find creative solutions and invest sweat equity wherever possible. You start by checking the low-hanging fruit off the punch list, tasks like spackling mysterious holes in the original window frames, replacing lightbulbs, and gingerly tucking the porch door screen back into its frame with a butter knife.

                Next you move onto jobs that are a bit more disruptive and take more time and resources, but that go a long way towards improving the look of the house. Painting is a great thing to do at this phase. Taping window frames and baseboards is a time consuming precursor to painting, but is very much worth it if the color of your paint is significantly different than the wood trim, if you’re trying to preserve the natural-wood look of that trim, or if you’re painting an accent wall.

Tomorrow’s Treasures

Brian DeFelice is the Information Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA and Anthony DeFelice Jr. is a retired U.S. Marine, antiques dealer, and accordion player in Plymouth, MA

My father recalls the time he was in the middle of an intense bidding war with another antique dealer over an item. He was in an auction house in Acushnet, Massachusetts and was sitting in the way back of the spacious barn that had been converted into an antique auction house. He was smoking a cigarette with the other smokers (it was the early 90s that was allowed back then!). Though he could not recall what the item he was bidding on was, he remembers he knew he wanted it for his antique store, but was being constantly outbid by another dealer who was in the front row of the auction house.

Meanwhile, I was in my usual stomping ground: the kitchen area, watching “Big Bill'' the auctioneer moderate the bidding war between my dad and the other bidder. I loved going to antique auctions with my dad because the people at the auction house treated me like a prince. Everyone was really nice and they would let me play with some of the (less valuable) antique toys, and Big Bill would let me have a cheeseburger on the house. To this day, my mom and I still talk about how good those cheeseburgers were. Big Bill was a presence. He was loud and totally in charge of the auction that night. I remember that for less valuable items, he would start the bid at $1 and would say “let’s start this bid at a bawk bawk bawk bawk” and start imitating and clucking like a chicken. I was seven at the time, and this silliness NEVER got old with me.

Tales from the Swamp

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the February 13, 2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin.

           If you study a map of Florida, you'll see that most of the southern tip is a remote green wilderness with few roads or cities. Except for that significant development of cities and towns along both of Florida's southern coasts, there are just a few east-to-west highways that connect Boca Raton on the Atlantic to Naples on the Gulf. One of them, Highway 41, starts in a downtown neighborhood in Miami and veers north at Everglades City, bypassing Marco Island, skirts the Gulf Coast cities of western Florida, and then heads north to Michigan. This Tamiami Trail passes east from Miami to the west and north to Tampa. Along the Everglades, it is known as Alligator Alley, with one lane in each direction. Alligators, commonly seen in the waters near the highway, share this land along with hundreds of other animal and bird species.

           A more well-known highway, Interstate 75, skirts the northern parts of the Florida everglades and Big Cypress National Preserve. It travels through Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve before it, too, turns north through western Florida, before it reaches West Virginia forests and eventually crosses the land between the Great Lakes and ends at the Canadian border.
           Most travelers take either of these two routes across the vast glades of Florida. The hardier traveler, however, travels southwest from Homestead, passing through Everglades National Park along State Highway 9336 and deep into the swamp at the southernmost tip.  Those riskier adventure-seekers can then go to the ghost town of Flamingo, or travel along the 99-mile Everglades Wilderness Waterway. This watery land is also known as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness. It is only accessed by kayak, canoe, and shallow-draft powerboats through a system of interconnected creeks, rivers, bays, and lakes. It is recommended that boaters relying on paddles plan eight days to travel – one of the passes is navigable only at high tide.
           The Florida Everglades was originally a 14,000-square mile expanse. Through a series of diversions, the Everglades has shrunk to 4,000 square miles. The 1.5 million acres known as Everglades National Park protects the 20% of the original area.
            While most of the America's national parks are established to preserve the beautiful and unique geography of the United States (such as Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley) the Everglades National Park was created to protect a fragile ecosystem. Lake Okeechobee to the north feeds a river that flows through the glades into Florida Bay. I had always envisioned the Everglades as a dark and murky, wet and wild place much like a rain forest. Instead, I have learned it is a flowing river and provides a perfect habitat for the American crocodile and other reptiles such as alligators and snakes, the Florida panther, the West Indian manatee, 350 species of birds and hundreds of types of fish.
           In 1882 the first plans to drain these Florida wetlands began as somewhat well-intentioned uses for agricultural and residential development. At that time, Miami was merely an eastern outpost. Once a land inhabited by the Tequesta – a Native American tribe that occupied this area along the southeastern Atlantic coast – missionaries and colonists were attracted to the land and its long growing season.  When railroad tycoon Henry Flagler connected the Florida East Coast Railway to Miami, the population of the town was a bit over 300. After World War II, Miami's population soared to nearly 500,000, similar to what it is today. However, the northern and southern metropolis of Miami boasts over 6 million residents, the seventh-largest in the United States.
           Fortunately for Florida, environmentalists intervened well before this population boom to protect the vanishing Everglades. The foremost of those was Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
           Many of us are familiar with the name Marjory Stoneham Douglas. On Valentine's Day two years ago, a deranged gunman killed 17 children and adults at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That school had opened on Douglas' 100th birthday in 1990. An elementary school in Miami-Dade County is also named after her, along with a municipal building, and a 15-minute orchestra piece, Voice of the Everglades. But, there is so much more to attribute to Douglas, including saving the Everglades.
           Marjory Stoneman Douglas has roots in New England that I never knew until my Everglades reading began. While she was born in 1890 in Minneapolis, after the divorce of her parents at age six she moved to her mother's family home in nearby Taunton, Massachusetts. At the age of 17, she won a Boston Herald prize for a short story. A stellar reader, writer and student, she left home for Wellesley College at the age of eighteen and graduated in 1912.
            Several years later, after the death of her mother, (and a failed marriage to a scoundrel named Kenneth Douglas) she moved to Florida. There she began writing for a newspaper that her father published – later to be named the Miami Herald. It was through her journalistic voice that Marjory began changing the history of Florida.
           Her early activism included women's suffrage and public health. Her efforts turned to environmentalism early in the 1920s when she was in her thirties when she joined the board of the Everglades Tropical National Park Committee. In 1947, she wrote The Everglades: River of Grass, the essential book written about the Everglades.
           The story of Florida, the terrible mismanagement of natural resources, the Big Sugar pollution of Lake Okeechobee, the rampant abuse of the land, and the corruption of politicians, is a larger story than this column can begin to describe. Yet, the work of Marjory Stoneham Douglas has saved a portion of the Florida Everglades for generations to enjoy.    
           If you are interested in learning about this magical wilderness and its rescue, read The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (2007) by Time correspondent Michael Grunwald.  In another great book, Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades (2004), author Ted Levin describes his many journeys through the Everglades, with profiles of those who attempted to coerce or steal the Everglades for development - and those who have worked to win it back.
           If you want a serious, and sometimes hilarious, account, read Hodding Carter's Stolen Water: Saving the Everglades from Its Friends, Foes and Florida (2005). It's a great way to begin an education into the story of Florida and the abuse of its land, particularly the Everglades wilderness.
           Jack E. Davis' biography of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, An Everglades Providence (2009), is a 700-page tome dedicated to the virtues and actions of this amazing woman. In 1993, five years before her death at age 108, Marjory was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor granted by the United States. The citation read "Grateful Americans honor the Grandmother of the Glades by following her splendid example in safeguarding America's beauty and splendor for generations to come."

            A lovely children's picture book biography will be published this September. Marjory Saves the Everglades will be an important book to share with every young environmentalist. As Marjory and other preservationists cry, "The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we get to keep the planet."

           

New Year, New Me?

In my last article, I claimed I avoid New Year’s resolutions like the plague. Now that we’re a month into 2020, I have changed my tune.  My motto has also been “All things in moderation” and I think I can apply that to the “new year, new me” spirit of January. I’ve correctly observed I’ll never be the type to make a massive change on January 1st but I could be the sort of person who makes small changes which add up to a sizable difference over the year.

Instead of “resolution,” I choose to use the term “modification.” This term is less radical and scary than resolution and thus, makes my goals feel more attainable. I’m not resolving to undertake a new lifestyle, I’m just making a few adjustments to the one I already have. I also try to stay away from trends when considering little changes at the start of the year. It seems like the Internet is always ready to champion the latest health or diet fads along with the best way to organize your time, be happier, less stressed, a more effective parent, a better employee, etc. The self-help industry is booming and librarians certainly see this reflected in the demand for books on this topic. Librarians are constantly fielding requests for books on how to improve your life and updating our self-help collection with new titles.

My Journey to Not Motherhood

Lydia Sampson is the Assistant Director/Technical Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read her column in the January 30, 2020 issue of the Transcript & Bulletin.

The doctor slid a piece of paper across the table showing a line graph that looked like it represented a stock market crash-  a jagged line rising, peaking, falling, then plummeting. The line represented my fertility. She explained the graph with facts, numbers and percentages, but the image of that nose-diving line got the point across. The doctor explained that if I did everything right- took hormones, tracked my ovulation, timed my pregnancy attempts carefully- I’d still only have a 5% chance of getting pregnant, and even if I did, there’d be a 60% chance of miscarriage.

Preliminary tests showed nothing physically wrong with me or my husband. The doctor was essentially telling me I couldn’t have kids because I was just too old. I quickly learned that telling people about the prognosis only made me feel worse. Suddenly everyone had encouraging words about women bearing children late in life. Everyone knew somebody in their mid-forties who had a healthy baby, or someone diagnosed as infertile who wasn’t after all, or a couple who began the process of adoption only to get pregnant soon after. Good for all of those people, I thought, but what about the women who received similar news to mine, and did not go on to have a “miracle” child? I could not count on being one to defy the odds.