59 pages • 1 hour read
Peg KehretSmall Steps: The Year I Got Polio
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “You Can’t Burn My Bear!”
By the next day, Peg can swallow orange juice and broth, and soon she can eat soft foods. Her chart continues to say, “NO MILK,” but whenever she asks for a milkshake, she gets one. Soon, Peg can swallow and breathe more easily, her deep aching pains go away, and the muscle spasms stop. Her favorite doctor, a young blonde intern named Dr. Bevis, removes the oxygen tent to see if Peg can breathe on her own without it, and she can. Peg is overjoyed when the nurses remove the threatening iron lung from Peg’s room, and the next day, the oxygen tent is removed as well. Shortly after, Peg moves out of isolation and is finally able to go through the dozens of get-well cards and gifts from family and friends. However, the nurse collects them to have them burned, in order to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread. Peg throws a fit, especially when they take away and burn the bear that Art gave her.
Peg is moved to a new room, which she shares with a small, 8-year-old boy named Tommy, yet all she can see is his head because he’s in an iron lung. She’s glad to have someone else to talk to but wishes he was a girl and nearer to her age. Tommy tells her that many people are able to breathe by themselves after being in an iron lung for several months. He is sure that he will be able to recover soon as well. She falls asleep to the sound of his machine.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Hot Packs”
Peg develops a crush on Dr. Bevis. He paints her toenails but asks her for a favor in return: Someday, he wants to watch her regain her ability to walk. She agrees. His visits quickly become the highlight of Peg’s days, and they exchange knock-knock jokes that Tommy also enjoys. Peg asks her parents for a radio so she can listen to her favorite program, the “Lone Ranger.” This makes both Peg and Tommy happy; the program is something they look forward to as there is no end in sight for their recovery.
Although there is no cure for polio, there are the Sister Kenny treatments, which are designed to minimize its effects. The treatments consist of two parts: hot packs and muscle stretching. Peg receives hot packs twice a day after her fever breaks. She lies on her stomach while a nurse places intensely hot cloths across Peg’s bare back and the backs of her arms and legs. The first time this happens, Peg believes that the cloths are mistakenly too hot. She screams and cries despite the nurse’s assurances that the hot packs are helping. Just as the hot packs cool and become soothing, the nurse switches them out with freshly steaming cloths. Only two days into the hot pack treatments, Peg inquires about how long the treatment might last, hoping that the answer is only a week like with most medicines. Peg is disheartened to hear that the hot packs will continue for weeks or months—for however long Peg remains at the hospital.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Torture Time”
The second element of the Sister Kenny treatment is muscle stretching exercises. Due to frequent muscle spasms during the onset of polio, muscles tighten significantly. To regain the strength needed to move and potentially walk, a patient’s muscles must be stretched back to normal. These stretches are incredibly painful, and Peg spends her sessions begging her physical therapist to stop. The therapist, whom Peg nicknames Mrs. Crab, is unrelenting. She is unsympathetic to Peg’s screaming and crying, often antagonizing Peg as she stretches her muscles beyond their limits without giving the girl enough time to recover between stretches. Peg complains to Tommy about Mrs. Crab, saying “Mrs. Crab never had polio […] She doesn’t know how much it hurts” (56). Peg begins to call these sessions “Torture Time.”
Aside from her Sister Kenny treatments, Peg spends most of her time in her bed. Her thoughts spin wildly out of control during these periods. She is aware that she might never move the way she used to again, and when she recalls the pictures of polio patients in wheelchairs and leg braces, she thinks, “At least they could use their arms and hands; I couldn’t even do that” (59). She is terrified of always having paralysis like so many others and wonders how her life will play out if she survives. Her school has no ramps or elevators to accommodate a wheelchair, and her dreams of being a veterinarian or a writer seem impossible when she’s unable to move even her fingers. One day, Dr. Bevis comes in during “Torture Time,” and Peg feels embarrassed that he has witnessed her daily tantrum with Mrs. Crab. He tells her that the exercises will help her walk one day, and that without them, she will never be able to walk. He tells Peg that he’s proud of her, and this encouragement is enough to change Peg’s behavior. Peg desperately longs to keep her promise to walk for Dr. Bevis—to please him, but also to improve her situation. If she has to stretch her muscles to walk again, then she decides she will, no matter how much it hurts.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In contrast to the rapid onset of her disease, Chapters 4 through 6 emphasize the excruciating slowness of recovery and the importance of taking small steps toward healing. It is through this sequence of Peg’s successes and the Sister Kenny treatments that the theme of Emotional Turmoil Throughout Recovery reaches its peak. While there are many highs and lows following this section, the beginning of Peg’s recovery is certainly the most painful.
The emotional moment when Peg’s quarantine bear must be burned symbolizes stepping from her old life and into a new, completely different one. Because her polio progressed so quickly, Peg has not been able to fully process the long-term implications and understand how this development will affect her life. Up until this point, her sole aim has been to recover—but she doesn’t truly know what the recovery process will require her to endure. Recovery doesn’t follow a linear progression, and it doesn’t come easily. To face the long road of healing ahead, Peg’s values and perception will change in more ways than she can presently comprehend. The outcome of her recovery will determine the changes she’ll need to adapt to if she wants to live an independent life beyond the hospital walls. Already, Peg realizes that her dreams of becoming a veterinarian or a writer might never be attainable if she cannot recover at least some of her mobility. The mention of Peg’s dreams of becoming a writer also creates a new thread between the events of Kehret’s youth and the self-evident reality that she has in fact achieved her childhood dream and reaches some positive form of recovery.
The arduous Sister Kenny treatments are only endurable because of The Value of Connection in Recovery personified by Dr. Bevis, Tommy, her parents, and even the awful Mrs. Crab, for in one way or another, each person gives Peg compelling reasons to keep fighting. Peg’s dramatic tantrums regarding treatment effectively reemphasize her young age, for although her dedication, strength, and resilience are very adult responses to a desperate situation, her outbursts and rebelliousness serve as a reminder of just how much she must endure at such a young age. Each time a nurse wheels in the dreaded hot pack treatments, Peg fixates on the wheels, which “squeaked and rattled across the floor as she approached, sounding like a freight train approaching its station” (52-53). Freight trains are known for being loud, large, and heavy. The simile at use implies the lack of boundaries Peg feels in the treatment, which comes unbidden and with unrelenting force. She’s unable to move, and thus has no control over the painful hot packs placed on her body and no way to remove them. The sudden sound of a freight train—like the sudden appearance of the hot pack cart—evokes fear. Peg therefore oscillates between the pain and fear surrounding each session and the knowledge that no matter how painful it is, “Torture Time” is helping her to recover.
Peg makes her first internal connections at University Hospital when she meets Dr. Bevis and Tommy. Her connection with Dr. Bevis leads to an important promise: to recover her ability to walk. In addition to her desire to please Dr. Bevis, Peg’s connection to Tommy is built through their shared experience of polio and their mutual interest in the “Lone Ranger” radio program. The mutual understanding the pair has about the difficulties of polio is something that Peg knows her old friends will never understand, and she forms a much deeper, much stronger bond with Tommy as a result. Peg’s understanding that her experiences have irrevocably altered her connection with her old friends signifies her first real experiences with The Impact of Adversity on Perspective.
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