Facing new functional loss is one aspect of the late effects of polio. While a positive focus is healthy and contributes to adjustment, to focus only on the positive, and to ignore the loss and its pain, separates one from his/her own experiences. Individuals need to adapt to, or grieve, loss. If grieving is incomplete, further psychological growth and development …
Shared peer advice from polio survivors about what works for them.
Share your solution:
News about people who have made significant contributions to the disability community.
Share your story:
Polio Doctors
There is no official certification for a “polio doctor.” The most common use of this informal designation is a physician with knowledge, experience and interest in evaluation and treatment of polio survivors. Given the most common new disabling medical problems of polio survivors, physicians with expertise in neuromuscular disease management that includes the ability to recognize and treat chronic musculoskeletal …
Guide for Children in Rural Areas
“Chapter 7: Polio” in Werner, David. Disabled Village Children: A Guide for Community Health Workers, Rehabilitation Workers, and Families. Hesperian Foundation. 2009. David Werner was a co-founder of the Hesperian Foundation. A biologist and educator by training, he has worked as a health activist for the past 40 years in village health care, community-based rehabilitation, and “Child-to-Child” health initiatives in the …
Still Here, After All These Years
Lawrence C. Becker “You had polio? I thought they cured that.” If I had $10 for every time I’ve heard those words, I could sponsor a vaccination program in a village in some hard-to-reach part of the world. That would be a good thing. But polio is not “cured” by the vaccines—it is prevented. There’s a difference. Polio is not …
The FDR Bond: How a Little Girl’s Friendship With America’s Most Famous Polio Patient Changed Her Forever
Anne K. Gross, PhD On the evening of November 3, 1928, three year old Carol Rosenstiel, her braces hidden under her pant trousers, her wooden crutches digging into her underarms, stood on the platform of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, a huge suitcase by her side. Her mother, Evelyn, holding her three month old son, bent down, straightened …
Acute Polio and Its Evolution: Reminiscences of a ‘Polio Fellow’
Ernest W. Johnson, MD Returning from 34 months in the southeast Pacific as a GI to my home in Akron, Ohio, I was entitled to four calendar years of a university education funded by the GI bill. I enrolled at The Ohio State University (OSU) and while rooming with a high school friend who was completing his last year of …
Learning from Disability
Grace Young My life changed course when I had polio at age nine, but I was too young to realize it. When a person is disabled in adulthood their whole world is turned upside down pretty quickly. At the age of nine, I only knew that I couldn’t walk, play outside with my friends, or go to school for a …
Close Encounters of the Post-Polio Kind
Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, M Ed Psych, Omaha, Nebraska, is a polio survivor, a writer, and is founder and former director of Nebraska Polio Survivors Association. It’s not as if we polio survivors never run into a glitch or two in a day. Let’s face it—dealing with the unexpected has become part of everyone’s routine. Developing the finesse to do …