After being told by my General Practitioner that post-polio was "all in my head", insulted, I decided to find out everything I could, changing GPs immediately. At that stage I hadn’t rejoined the polio community, wanting to avoid wheelchairs, braces, physios and chaps in white coats. But, as a journalist I realised it was my mission to research and share information on late effects of polio available then as far as I knew, only from the United States.

So, I wrote an article for a national weekly newspaper, headlined ‘Veteran of the Paralysis.’ The subtitle was "Frances Kelly [maiden name] recalls the torture of treatment for childhood polio and the struggle to keep her individuality.” This was before being diagnosed with childhood amnesia trauma. Without realizing I remembered nothing of those years, I wrote the article by interviewing my mother and a couple of surviving medics of the day. The story was picked up by national radio. After one broadcast, a farmer on his tractor in remote Western Australia telephoned in tears of gratitude saying he now knew what was wrong with him. The article, I am proud to say, was republished in “a selection of Australia’s finest contemporary journalism.”

Polio Network Victoria, founded in 1987 – news to me – invited me to a meeting as a result. I attended but cried all the way home in the car over being among those very disabled people I wanted to avoid becoming. I got over that, finding those people were some of the few in the world who knew what not having a childhood was like. They were to become my most understanding friends.