On this day, April 12^th, 1955, Jonas Salk, after much research done on monkey kidney cells, announced the successful creation of a vaccine against the dreadful illness, Polio. Most people knew someone who had either suffered the debilitating effects of polio or who had died from it. The announcement of a vaccine that could go on to eradicate this killer was good news.

I was one of the early recipients of it. The plan was to administer the live vaccine on a sugar lump. In some places, there was a kind of party atmosphere to all this. The local children were invited en masse to join in sugar cube consumption and there would be balloons and free drinks and much jollification. My small corner of the world didn’t do jollification and balloons. My sweetener was given to me courtesy of Doctor C., who was the grumpiest and most irascible GP that a patient could ever have the misfortune to encounter. One particular patient, in the under seven age bracket, hacked him off more than most.    

  Our nearest town’s three doctors lived in a very fine house. I had no reason to suspect that it was not their permanent residence. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, was very finely furnished and one of the doctor’s wives served home-made biscuits and tea in fine china cups to patients who keeled over. My sister was born with a natural ability to pass out at every opportune moment and therefore got to eat a great many biscuits, but, as much as I longed to taste these delights and no matter how hard I tried, my body resolutely refused to succumb to the vapours even when faced with the most goriest of sights. I’ve had to face facts over the years; I’m just not a smelling salts and lace handkerchief sort of girl and, as a result, when there are biscuits to be got, I lose out every single time.

 The waiting room was decadent. Well, to me it was. For all I know, everybody else who went there might have had rooms just like it. We most certainly did not. It was essentially the parlour. A large polished round table with lion claw feet stood in the very centre of the green, lincrusta lined room and it always had a vase of fresh flowers set on an embroidered cloth in the centre. This in itself was extravagance enough. That someone would actually cut real flowers and carry them inside was complete anathema. The only flowers we had in our house, on a regular basis, were the plastic daffodils and tulips that were given away as free gifts with washing powder and garden flowers were only cut when a visit to the cemetery was due. My plausible conclusion was that patients must die there quite frequently and this was the doctors’ way of saying sorry. Neat piles of ‘Farmer’s Weekly’, ‘People’s Friend’, ‘The Dalesman’ and ‘Woman’s Realm’ were placed around the edge of the table. A huge, tiled fireplace almost filled one wall and when the fire was lit, to sit on one of the fender seats, stroking the silky black fur of the surgery dog that sprawled across the rug, made the waiting a treat. The other seats around the room were a mixture of balloon back, dining chairs and easy chairs with green and white loose covers. The pantry was utilised as a store for the patient’s records, held in manilla card envelopes and stacked neatly along the shelves. When the doctor was ready for us, he popped his head through the door to tell us.

 Dr C. and I had got off on the wrong foot right from the start. He had been used to babies that appeared without any problem and only the midwife in attendance. A bairn that had the temerity to cotter herself so successfully in her mam’s inner workings that she disengaged the whole way of doing things and in the process called him away from his evening whisky was destined to be no friend of his. But it was the tetanus injection affair that had really put the tin hat on our relationship. I had been wading in the beck, my skirt tucked into my knickers and barefooted, tracking newts, with a net in one hand and an empty jam-jar dangling from a piece of string in the other, when I tripped on a piece of weed and went headlong. The jam jar broke and some of the glass tore my arm open for about four inches. I made my way home across the fields, instinctively holding my arm high and stopping to marvel, occasionally, at the utter gooiness of it all. Even I knew that it was a deep cut. I was transported, by tractor, down to the cottage hospital in the town where it was stitched successfully and I revelled in the attention. As far as I was concerned that was the end of the matter. However, Doctor C. had been informed of the incident and had been asked to administer a tetanus injection as I had not had a routine DTaP. When I saw his black car stop at the five bar gate at the end of our track, climb wearily out to lift the latch and push the gate open, climb back in again to drive through and then re-emerge to push the gate to, again, I wasn’t sure what he’d come for but I had a grievous sense of unease. I had observed his arrival from my vantage point in the chestnut tree and watched as he exchanged greetings with mam, who cast a glance over the yard, hollered my name and then ushered Doctor C. through the back door. I dragged myself out of the tree and across to the house. There was the great physician, disgruntled by the inconvenience of it all, seated at the scullery table, drawing up a syringe with a needle that I was convinced would skewer my elbow to my rib-cage. He unceremoniously grabbed my arm and began to swab it. I pushed him away, sending the cup of tea that mam had provided for him into his lap. He was not best pleased. Snatching up the needle, he instructed mam to hold me whilst he did the deed. I was having none of it. I screamed, thrashed, kicked them both away and bolted across the stack yard. I clambered up to the top of the straw bales and hid in the hollow at the top where I regularly went to escape and the cats went to have their kittens. I thought I was safe. I hadn’t accounted for the determination of this seething man who refused to be outdone. He blustered into the barn, obviously having being tipped off by mam, his face  beetroot red, his copious body puffing and wheezing with the effort. He  heaved himself up the stack and hemmed me in with bales before I had time to escape, then pinning my arm down with his knee and a look that can only be described as unbridled wrath, he pulled the syringe from his jacket pocket and rammed it home. I was terrified of Doctor C. from that moment on.

  When my turn came to eat the sugar lump which had one suspicious, lilac tinged side to it, I licked, testing it. It tasted bitter. I asked if I could save it for later, thinking that the donkey might appreciate it better. The request was not answered. Doctor C’s demeanour began to gather the steam of a raging bull and he advanced towards me. I froze momentarily, then swallowed the wretched cube whole and ran from the room. I assume it did its job, but I’ve never touched another lump of sugar since.