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From long-time commenter Farans Kolosar:
I contracted polio during the summer of 1952 shortly before I was
supposed to enter kindergarten. The actual illness was frightening and
painful, but the terror it inspired was almost worse. I remember that,
as I was lying on the examining table, feverish and aching, in the
process of being diagnosed, the table suddenly began to buck and roll
like a ship in a heavy sea and I felt I was about to be hurled onto the
floor. Whether this was the effect of the disease or the perhaps
clumsily performed spinal tap necessary to diagnose it, I’m not sure it,
but added to the fear. I recall being wheeled on a gurney down what
seemed an interminable corridor lined with iron lungs, each with a
small, peaked-faced child’s head protruding from one end. A bit later,
during what I suppose was the climax of the disease, I recall feeling my
whole body on fire with pain as the virus raced up and down the nerve
pathways. For a day or two I couldn’t sleep or find a comfortable
position in which to rest,
The disease itself passed rather quickly, but it was only after it was
past that the extent of the damage could be assessed. Some patients were
paralyzed but recovered later; others remained paralyzed for the rest of
their lives; many died. Nerves damaged or destroyed by the virus could
no longer innervate muscles and those muscles atrophied.
I was, as they invariably say, lucky: at the end of the day, I had a
fair bit of atrophy to the muscles of my right leg, and possibly a bit
of nervous system damage affecting physical coordination and tasks like
handwriting, but was otherwise unscathed. At present my right leg is an
inch shorter than the left leg and the foot is dropped and twisted
slightly to one side, but even now, in my seventies, I seldom limp and
as a rule suffer only occasional loss of balance. The leg is nonetheless
useful, although it is sinfully easy to get me off balance, which kept
me from learning how to fight “like a man” growing up. For the most part
the damage isn’t obvious unless I’m wearing short pants, and even then
not everyone notices. In my younger days I was even able to run a
little, though organized athletics were out of the question because I
was so bad at them.
Out next-door neighbors in the more-or-less Winesburg, Ohio I grew up in
were less fortunate: there were two boys, the younger of whom was my
good friend for a while. The older brother had been in early adolescence
when striken and was paralyzed from the waist down. He lived in a
wheelchair and had to be hoisted in and out of bed with a sort of crane.
Themother, who worked as a waitress in a local tavern, raised the two
boys alone. I remember their rented apartment as being as bare of
furnishings as the set of The Honeymooners. The place was scrupulously
clean and had no odor apart from a faint smell of Dial soap. They were
brave, strong people.
When Salk and Sabin produced their vaccines, the public health
authorities made sure all the schoolchildren were vaccinated. I would
get my picture in the local paper as the brave little sufferer who got
the vaccinations in spite of not really needing them just to show others
how safe and easy it was.
Just now I was reading a news item asserting that Trump is trying to get
an exclusive US patent on a German coronavirus candidate vaccine. Nobody
seems to think there’s anything strange about this bit of international
thuggery. What a long, sorry road we’ve come down since the days of Salk
and Sabin. There’s a retreat from socially necessary governance across
the board unlike anything we’ve seen before–the inevitable product of
years of neoliberalism, not just the sickening malice and ineptitude of
Trump.
Stay safe comrades. It’s a bungle out there.
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