Poliomyelitis or ‚polio‘ is a term deeply imbedded in the medical history of the United States. While this virus at times had a pandemic dimension and produced a variety of impacts on personal behaviors, lifestyle and even national policies, unlike the current pandemic it had a definitive and happy ending. However, this result was not the seemingly one-dimensional cure appropriately identified with breakthrough medical research personalized with the name Salk. It had another more personal and deeply painful course of action that involved the very intense and individual efforts by those afflicted by the virus and their families as they coped with the disease while the medical community attempted to understand the disease and search for a cure.
This is a story of one individual’s journey through his life as a polio survivor, in which he describes the many steps he took with breakthrough processes some of which were painful and untested, working with various medical professionals and, indeed, even some iconic, worldwide personalities as he became part of the medical world’s campaign to gain support for the proposed steps to change the course of treatment for the disease. The author’s story, however, does not end with the disappearance of the disease. Because of his age, he is among the very few polio survivors that remain and his story reveals the starting discovery of some long latent effects of polio that only revealed themselves as he entered his eighties adding a remarkable dimension to the term, ‚long hauler‘. But, characteristic of his incredible attitude throughout this journey and taking the admonition of his late father: ‚it is what it is, now deal with it!‘ the author takes us on his latest step in overcoming this dreaded scourge we knew as polio. – J. Kent Riegel
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