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By Richard L. Bruno
The weather outside if frightful, and your toes are too frostbiteful. But, since you’ve no place to go…
Wait. Who says you’ve no place to go? It may warm your cold polio feet on this blustery March day to know about a Norwegian study of 88 subjects diagnosed with “post polio syndrome” (PPS). Twenty-nine were said to be “control” subjects, even though most were getting “one or two physiotherapy and/or swimming sessions” a week.
Fifty-nine subjects received therapy for PPS for four weeks, although the details of the treatment were not described. Therapy was said to be [...]
By Richard L. Bruno
When people talk about caring for someone with a disability, you often hear of caregivers getting burned out. When it comes to caring for polio survivors, it’s the polio survivor who often gets burned-not out, but up.
Many polio survivors get angry when it’s suggested that they ask others for help. Actually, their anger is hiding a real fear. Most polio survivors had painful early experiences of rejection and emotional and physical abuse, often by family members, just because they’d had polio. Polio survivors learned early and often that they should look “normal” and act “normal,” never [...]
by Richard L. Bruno
You may be asking why there’s a new column in Action about polio, a terrifying disease of the twentieth century that was cured when a vaccine was developed in 1955. The poliovirus, which caused muscle weakness, paralysis and death, is gone, you may say.
Unfortunately, the vaccine didn’t cure polio. And, the poliovirus is far from gone. The virus is alive today and paralyzing children and adults in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria despite a decades-long international vaccination effort. What’s more, 10 African and Asian nations that had been polio-free, thanks to vaccination, have had the virus reintroduced [...]
If you thought the Salk vaccine permanently ended the scourge of polio, think again.
By Kelly Rouba
Ms. Wheelchair America 2008 Alana Wallace has found strategies to cope with post-polio related fatigue.
It’s been about two years since NBC’s show American Dreams had its final run on prime time television after falling victim to low ratings. Today, the show is still missed by viewers who enjoyed being able to journey back in time through the eyes of heroine Meg Pryor as she danced on American Bandstand and worried as her older brother JJ fought in the Vietnam War and her younger brother [...]
Seattle-based artist Harriet Sanderson expresses herself on her disability by creating powerful images out of wooden canes, wheelchairs, and other unusual media.
By Lori A. Wood
“When I was three, I was on the couch taking a nap, and when I woke up, I was feverish and couldn’t move my right arm,” says Harriet Sanderson, an artist who lives in Seattle now, but who grew up in her native Indiana. “My parents took me to the hospital. That’s really all I remember.”
The little girl was diagnosed with polio. “It was 1950,” Sanderson says. “Most of the people I know who had polio were [...]
Survivors of Childhood Polio Do Well Decades Later As They Age
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that years after experiencing childhood polio, most survivors do not experience declines greater than expected in their elderly counterparts, but rather experience only modest increased weakness which may be commensurate with normal aging.
“Other researchers have suggested that polio is a more aggressive condition later in life, but we’ve actually found it to be relatively benign,” said Eric Sorenson, MD, Mayo Clinic neurologist and lead study researcher. “Our results suggest that polio survivors may not age any differently than those in the normal population— they’re not [...]
United Spinal Board member Denise Mc Quade’s struggle with polio as a child steeled her for the larger struggle of advocating for the civil rights of people with disabilities
By Rob Ingraham
Board member Denise Mc Quade educated
United Spinal staff about her condition at a recent
“Lunch and Learn” seminar on post-polio.
For most of us, the word “polio” conjures up black and white images from the 1950s: school kids lined up for vaccinations, clumsy metal and leather leg braces, a doctor named Jonas Salk, and a fearsome device known as an “iron lung.”
During the early 1950s, more than 20,000 new [...]
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