BleedGopher
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per Dennis:
When Bud Grant was stricken with polio as a kid, iron lungs were used to treat the disease. Precursors to modern breathing machines, iron lungs didn’t completely cure polio victims but they did save lives.
Yet as is the case today with ventilators needed to treat people seriously ill with coronavirus, iron lungs were in short supply. Also, they were expensive, about $1,500 in 1938, when Grant contracted polio at age 10. That was the average cost of a house at the time.
“There were fund drives to try to raise money for iron lungs,” the retired Vikings coach said.
Grant was speaking the other day from his Bloomington home, lying low like most everyone else. In more normal times, he might tune in a televised ballgame. Otherwise, except for news programs, he’s never been much of a TV watcher.
So until he can chase wild turkeys when seasons for those birds open in coming weeks, he hangs out with his partner, Pat Smith, decides with her which game bird or venison cut they’ll extract from their freezer for dinner, reads long nonfiction tomes (“Seven Pillars of Wisdom”; “The Allies”), and watches history repeat itself from the perspective of a 92-year-old.
Polio epidemics, he said, struck somewhere in the U.S. virtually every summer during the first half of the last century. No one knew where they came from or who would catch the debilitating disease next.
When Grant started limping, neither he nor his parents knew what was happening.
“I was taken to a local doctor, and though the accepted therapy at the time for polio was rest, he told us just the opposite,” Grant said. “He said, ‘Get the boy a baseball glove and get him playing ball. Don’t let him turn into a turnip.’ Which is what we did, and I started playing more and more sports. But we couldn’t afford a new glove. So dad gave me his.”
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!
When Bud Grant was stricken with polio as a kid, iron lungs were used to treat the disease. Precursors to modern breathing machines, iron lungs didn’t completely cure polio victims but they did save lives.
Yet as is the case today with ventilators needed to treat people seriously ill with coronavirus, iron lungs were in short supply. Also, they were expensive, about $1,500 in 1938, when Grant contracted polio at age 10. That was the average cost of a house at the time.
“There were fund drives to try to raise money for iron lungs,” the retired Vikings coach said.
Grant was speaking the other day from his Bloomington home, lying low like most everyone else. In more normal times, he might tune in a televised ballgame. Otherwise, except for news programs, he’s never been much of a TV watcher.
So until he can chase wild turkeys when seasons for those birds open in coming weeks, he hangs out with his partner, Pat Smith, decides with her which game bird or venison cut they’ll extract from their freezer for dinner, reads long nonfiction tomes (“Seven Pillars of Wisdom”; “The Allies”), and watches history repeat itself from the perspective of a 92-year-old.
Polio epidemics, he said, struck somewhere in the U.S. virtually every summer during the first half of the last century. No one knew where they came from or who would catch the debilitating disease next.
When Grant started limping, neither he nor his parents knew what was happening.
“I was taken to a local doctor, and though the accepted therapy at the time for polio was rest, he told us just the opposite,” Grant said. “He said, ‘Get the boy a baseball glove and get him playing ball. Don’t let him turn into a turnip.’ Which is what we did, and I started playing more and more sports. But we couldn’t afford a new glove. So dad gave me his.”
Lying low during coronavirus pandemic, Bud Grant sees history repeating itself
Stricken with polio at age 10, former Vikings head coach Bud Grant today sees similar "highly stressful times" with the unknowns surrounding COVID-19.
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!