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Spring 2008

A Personal Story – A Letter to the Editor in the Kennebec Journal of December 28, 2007 alerted readers of the importance of immunization and the seriousness of polio.  In talking  with the writer, Jane Coryell, I found her to be very knowledgeable about the effects of polio.  Now retired, she worked 10 years as a physical therapist in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Following further education, she taught at Boston University.   Here is her message:

 

 
Text Box: Here’s a point of view from a person who remembers what it was like before immunizations. When I was 12, I went to a Notre Dame football game and saw an ambulance behind one of the goalposts. It was Fred Snite, a young man who got polio right after he’d graduated from Notre Dame and was in an iron lung for life. In 1959, during one of the last polio epidemics, I was a physical therapy student. There were wards full of polio patients in iron lungs. There was also Kathy, about my age, paralyzed pretty much totally in the legs and mildly in the arms. She was bright, pretty, very social, and in a wheelchair for life. When I was a physical therapist, I treated Sonia, a sweet little girl. She had very little use of her arms and legs, and therefore not a very promising future. Her mother had rubella when she was pregnant with Sonia. I also treated a little boy who suffered brain damage when he had measles. He was left very handicapped, both mentally and physically and had no future. I have very little patience with young parents who were immunized when they were children and believe that it was always that way – that children didn’t get illness with serious consequences. I wish that they would listen to the people who know otherwise.

What is Post Polio Syndrome?

Dottie Woods Smith forwarded this summary of post polio syndrome that was in an e-mail received from post-polio-med@listserv.icors.org.

             “Post-polio syndrome is the name for a collection of incurable symptoms—including muscle wastage, muscle and joint pain, and mental and physical fatigue—common to many who have suffered from the full-blown disease.

             When the symptoms recur, it may be 20-40 years after the initial disease.  Circulation may be impaired and breathing can become difficult due to weakening chest muscles.”

             According to neurologist Dr. Stephen Sturman of Birmingham, England, “our bodies degenerate with age.  If you’ve taken a hit earlier and already lost a large number of nerve cells, you only need to lose a few more and you’ll notice the effect.  This is what we call neurogenic weakness—one of the causes of PPS.”

             “Another possible cause is inflammation in the nerve cells, brought on by the immune system’s response to the original infection.  Sometimes, it can be caused by a complication of the earlier polio—for example, the spine may have been left twisted, which causes premature ageing of the vertebrae.”