Guest AuthorRecently I saw a blurb about a meeting of the Boca Area Post Polio Group. This jolted my memory back 20 years and a conversation with my friend “Jeremy,” a radiologist. Usually a robust man in his early 50s, he appeared a little stooped and sluggish. Finally, he confided to his closest friends what had been happening.
J. had polio as a child in the 1950s, about the same time as the violinist Itzhak Perlman. Unlike Perlman, J. recovered enough so that for decades afterwards no one could guess that he had been stricken as a child. Yet, he continued, now he began to suffer from weakness and fatigue. The doctor told him it was post-polio syndrome — a condition just then diagnosed and named. Alas, said the doctor, in future years other polio victims will see their muscles and bones weaken.
Which takes us back to the Florida group. I called them (at 561-488-4473), identified myself as a journalist, and was invited to their next meeting at the house of the group’s organizer, Maureen Hernandez, a vivacious redhead expertly navigating her life in a motorized scooter.
There I met about a dozen lovely people, all of them victims of the 1950s epidemic and all displaying a positive attitude toward life’s pleasures and challenges. Otherwise each case is unique and the timetable for the onset of symptoms varies from patient to patient.
Danny K. 74, was stricken with polio at age 3 in Lithuania, then occupied by the Germans. She had no treatment until she arrived in the United States six years later at age 9. Here she received the most advanced therapy available and an education that allowed for an independent life. Because of her delayed treatment, she could never walk without braces or crutches. Today she uses a scooter. Fortunately she experiences no pain, as do many in her group.
George M. is 90 and full of energy. His back-story is fascinating: He was 7 when he contracted the disease. Learning of the diagnosis, his mother and older sister resolved to never tell him the truth or mention the dreaded name around him. Aiding the deception was the fact that he did not need braces or a crutch. Thus, he waltzed off into the world unconcerned. Until, in his late teens, his right leg weakened and he was fitted with a brace. The best therapy for the leg was ice-skating. Imagine this 6-foot-5 graceful giant sliding over glacial surfaces! In later years his weakness became more pronounced, as did the fatigue. There was also rotator cuff surgery for an atrophied shoulder.
Remember the pictures of children who, unable to breathe, spent as long as a year in an iron lung? Bruce S., 74, a civil engineer from Michigan, had contracted polio when he was 13 months old. The baby could not breathe and needed an iron lung. But there was none available. And here’s when American ingenuity steps in: Maxwell K. Reynolds, an engineer, built an iron lung — but it wasn’t made of iron. It was made of wood. Later he built others from oil drums.
In today’s world of brilliant medical innovations, ancient diseases reappear from mysteriously hidden sources. For months Enterovirus 68 — a polio derivative, but unresponsive to polio cures — has infected 500 children and killed two. And, of course, Ebola, coming to us from West Africa, for which there is no effective medication or vaccine. And because of the media drumbeat, the authorities are preoccupied with logistics and panic, rather than innovative research.
We need a Maxwell Reynolds to the rescue! He who turned an oil drum into an iron lung may infuse some imagination into the numbing recitation of “protocol and standard procedures.”
NOTE: The Boca Area Post Polio Group meets at 11660 Timbers Way, Boca Raton FL 33428; phone 561-488-4473.
Rachel Patron is a former opinion columnist for the Sun-Sentinel. She resides in Boca Raton and is at work on a contemporary American novel. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
