HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF POLIO?

First, I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

I also want to apologize for not having a new posting for last week.  Time ran out for me before I was able to get my thoughts together and written down.  So I this week I decided to try a little harder and get this ready in advance.

My husband was not feeling at his best and so my time was taken up helping him.  He is now eighty years old and has been diagnosed with Post-Polio Syndrome, or PPS.  For most of my readers, I doubt very much if you have even heard of polio, unless it was in reference to your immunization shots.  But when we were children, polio was still a very feared and dreaded disease, especially among children, and during the “dog-days of summer” (another name for the month of August).

Polio itself has been around since Bible days.  In fact, it is mentioned by description in Matthew 8:6.  A centurion came to Jesus seeking healing for his servant boy.  The Amplified Bible puts it this way:  “Lord, my servant boy is lying at the house paralyzed and distressed with intense pains.”

Thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin, there are vaccines that can prevent people from getting the disease, although there is still no cure for polio.  Even now if someone gets this disease, the only thing that can be done is to treat the symptoms and let the disease “run its course.”  There are four strains of polio:

Mild:  People who have mild cases of polio do not even know they have it.  The symptoms are very similar to having a light case of the flu.  No after effects are experienced.      

Non-paralytic:  This kind of polio has stronger flu-like symptoms.  There is either very little or no pain and any muscle damage is usually light.  Resulting weakness is blamed on the “flu,” and regular everyday living eventually rebuilds the weakened muscles.

Paralytic:  This form of polio is the most painful.  If affects the spinal cord and/or the brain.  In ten to fourteen days, once polio has “run its course,” there is no more pain.  But any damage to the nerves lasts a lifetime.

When it attacks the lower spinal cord either the arms or the legs can be paralyzed.  This means the weakened arms or legs cannot function by themselves.  They must have help to be able to move.  Sometimes exercises can help arms and legs regain movement.  More often, braces are used to replace the necessary lost muscle strength.  People with weak legs choose either crutches and braced legs or wheelchairs to help them get around.

If polio attacks the upper spinal cord or the brain, it affects breathing and swallowing which can cause death.  Those who need help breathing use either a respirator and/or an iron lung.  An iron lung is a big tube-like “bed” one lies in.  A machine moves it’s “mattress” up and down to help the air go in and out of the lungs.

PPS:  The true definition for this fourth variety, is when someone who has already had polio  contracts the disease again, sometimes as many as thirty or forty years later.  PPS can strike the same place or a different part of the body and can cause paralysis even though the original polio did not.

However, now-a-days, the doctors have broadened the meaning of PPS to include accumulated health issues resulting from having had polio over a long period of time. 

My husband was nineteen months old when he contacted polio.  When the disease had run its course, he was left paralyzed in both of his legs.  So part of his PPS diagnosis concerns the fact that after seventy-four years of walking on crutches, the rotator cuffs in his shoulders have worn out and disappeared, making using his arms very painful.  As one of his doctors put it, “Arms were not made to be walked on for over seventy years.” 

Inadequate therapy due to non-experience of how to deal with a polio victim after five-bypass surgery, a diminished sense of balance, and extreme knee pain and sensitivity has confined to a bed, lift chair, or short periods in a wheelchair this man who used to amaze his classmates with the speed he could climb the ropes in gym class, do push-ups with his legs dangling in the air, fathered and raised three children, worked hard for over forty years to support his family, used to be able to climb in and out of boats, and holds a black belt in karate.

Even though his constant companion is pain, he still smiles, and attempts to live as normal a life as possible.

That’s why in my life, his needs come first.