Polio and Post Polio

I had polio at the age of four in 1948.  Today if I smell wet warm wool it takes me back to being in the hospital as a child.  They tapped my spine to find out if I had polio, and then they put me into isolation so no one else could have been affected.  In order to keep my body from contracting and hurting they put wet warm wool compresses over my body.

I remember being sick at home that July with measles and then with a strep throat.  One morning after a particularly fretful night, the doctor came to the house and asked me if I could walk.  I remember saying, "put me on the floor I can crawl."   After that my parents whisked me off to the nearest hospital mom holding me in her lap.  Mother sat by my hospital bed and read to me.  At one point they transferred me to De Paul Hospital, here the Sister's of Mercy helped with the nursing and there was a whole ward of children mostly affected with polio. There had been an outbreak of Polio in North Carolina and Norfolk Virginia was just a ways across the border.  I remember the other children our beds were lined up.  Several children were in iron lungs to keep them breathing.  Several times while I was there we had electric storms, and the electricity went off.  My father, doctors, other parents, any one who could help crank a generator to keep the iron lungs working.  Other children came into the ward too.  One girl had fallen off a horse while riding and had a steel plate in her head.  A little chinese girl came in she had been burned terribly.  I remember a little boy who had polio and his arm had been paralyzed, in later years we actually met again. 

During this time my parents would do anything they could to keep me happy, because all I wanted to do was to go home.  So they would ask me what I would like them to bring me.  I most have really upset them when I asked them to bring me a real fairy. 

That night mother went home and tried to figure out how to handle that request.  Finally she decided to make up a story for me about my own fairy, and to take a small doll and make that doll into a fairy.  Every day after that she would bring me tales of my fairy who lived in my grandparents back yard.  I was thrilled I had my own personal fairy.

I was in the Hospital for several months when I finally came home my brother was almost a year old.  My parents still took me for therapy to De Paul Hospital.  Dr. John Vann was my doctor he had had polio himself as a boy and he became an orthopedic surgent. He sent me to Warm Springs Georgia, where Franklin Roosevelt had his Little White House.  The doctors there were some of those that had worked with President Roosevelt.  After examing me they sent me home saying that Dr. Vann was one of the best. 

Now what was left for me to do was to live my life as normal as possible.  In the beginning I had a brace on both legs and a corset to hold my back straight.  I used crutches to walk with.  Eventually they did away with the right leg brace and the corset.  It was not until fifty years later that I knew the true extent of my paralysis.  Mother had told me that I had been paralysised from my sholdiers down.  Silly me I never realized that my arms were included in that area.  I used and abused my arms.  After all I used my arms rather than my legs to walk with.

When I reached Fifty, forty five years after coming down with polio, I began to experience some weakness.  Going up and down steps had become more difficult.  My arms had begun to ach sometimes.  I put this all up to aging. Actually several years before when I was working out at the "Y" I felt some weakness in my arms after swimming for a long time.  I register this, but tucked this worry away refusing to think about it until another time.

Around fifty five I really started to worry.  The term Post Polio had been batted about.  Did I have Post Polio?  I neede to know.  I began to be fearful, and a little depressed.  I needed to know.  I also needed to get disability.  I was afraid to go places without a son or a friend for fear of falling.  I needed help getting around, a scooter maybe?  How could I make a living if I was dependent on others to get me places? 

So I took matters into my own hands and made a appointment to be evaluated for post polio.  The die was cast,  there was no turning back now.  My son, Chris, took me up to Richmond Virginia to the Sheltering Arms Hospital to see Dr Wooten.  She specialized in Post Polio.  They ran me through a battory of test.  The result was yes I did indeed have post polio. Both legs were involved and both my arms.  MY ARMS!!!  I never really knew that my arms had been affected.  She said it would be best if I did not over use my muscles.  I needed to use a wheel chair.  She said I should get an electric wheelchair,  that my regular one was too much for my arms.  This was a relief in a way.  But I had no insurance and how could I afford an automatic chair. Once you use a Scooter or automatic wheel chair how do you get around?  All of a sudden I had a whole new set of worries.

I did notice after that somethings had become a little more difficult. I tended to ignore and go on.  I did start sitting some in my old wheel chair just so I would not burn myself out.  Eventually you do have to retrospect and look at what is happening in life