A couple of months ago, I gave a speech about Polio at my Toastmasters club. I was working on an advanced storytelling module, and this project asked me to create a story from my own experience or from the life of someone close to me. I may not have all the facts straight, but I think I got most of this right. The text of my polio speech went something like this:
Title: Strength
8 year old Patricia Donnelly was having a wonderful afternoon. It was a Sunday, and she was attending a birthday party. I’m sure that she enjoyed that party as only an 8 year old can. But things started to go wrong by the time she got home. When Patricia returned from the party, she told her mother that her head hurt – she had a headache. Her mother instructed her to lie down and told her that she’d check on her later. When Patricia’s mother checked on her, however, her concern about the headache changed to fear. Now Patricia had developed a fever.
Her mother called the doctor. Patricia was taken to the hospital where tests proved that their worst fear was true.
Patricia’s world changed dramatically. Very soon, Patricia’s two sisters were sent to live with their aunt in a nearby town. Local health officials put a quarantine sign in the yard, and no one but medical professionals were allowed in or out. Word of Patricia’s condition spread quickly throughout the little town. Even the paper boy refused to cross the property line or take the money the family left out for him. Instead, he ran up and threw the newspaper as hard as he could.
Does this sound like the plot of some bio-terror made-for-TV movie? Or some futuristic story of a biological agent that was accidentally unleashed on an unsuspecting population? Well, this story is true, and it took place almost 60 years ago. The disease that wracked Patricia Donnelly and so frightened her small Midwestern home town was Polio.
We don’t hear much about Polio today. It’s been extinct in the US since the 1960’s. But back in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, parents across this country braced themselves for an annual summertime epidemic. For most of those years, no one knew what caused it. No one knew how it spread. No one knew why it primarily attacked children. And there was no cure. Fear and hysteria reigned. Communities closed their swimming pools and cancelled their Little League baseball programs in efforts to reduce the spread of the disease.
But back to Patricia’s story. Shortly after the fever appeared, the disease attacked her central nervous system. One of her legs went limp and useless. She could no longer walk. Once the fever broke, the disease had run its course. She was moved to St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, IL, some 60 miles from home. There she spent time in a special children’s ward for Polio victims.
Patricia’s parents were not well off. They didn’t own a car and were dependent on trains and rides from friends and neighbors to visit her. Patricia told me that when her mother wasn’t around, she cried and cried and cried. It was a very tough time for her and her family.
In those days, there was no physical therapy. After a couple of surgeries to repair a condition called drop-foot, where the muscles in the leg are not strong enough to lift the front of the foot off the ground, and to install a small steel plate in her leg, Patricia’s doctors had done all they could. They sent her home.
Patricia could not walk. She crawled around the house, dragging her useless leg behind her. She could not attend school, so the local school system provided a tutor to help her keep up her studies. In the face of these obstacles, a weaker person would have given up. But Patricia was strong. Patricia slowly, gradually, courageously taught herself to walk again. The disease left her with a permanent limp, but she was walking! By the time her friends entered high school, Patricia was right there with them! She was a good student. She graduated from high school, worked for a time in a bank, met and married Al Castelli, and raised three children- one of them is me. Yes, Patricia Donnelly, now Pat Castelli, is my mother.
Mom is one of the strongest people I know. As I was growing up, she seemed just like every other mom on the block. I didn’t really think twice about her limp, nor did I realize the daily example of strength and perseverance she was giving us kids. She loved us and cared for my brother and sister and me as any mother would. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of Mom, my sister and I in the house where I grew up. A tornado was approaching in the midst of a horrific thunderstorm. Lightning flashed, thunder pealed, and the rain and wind pelted the outside of the house. The warning sirens were blaring outside, the radio was broadcasting a nearly constant string of messages urging us to take shelter immediately, and it sounded to my tiny ears like the house was about to collapse. I was scared down to the soles of my feet. I frantically asked Mom, “What will we do if the tornado hits our house?” Mom said, “If the tornado hits the house, I will cover you with my body to protect you.” I really believed her. And I still do. She would have done it!
You see, Mom lives her life not as a disabled person, but as a person who happens to have a disability. When I asked her about her Polio in preparation for this speech, she told me that she really has never thought about it. She doesn’t live her life in despair over Polio. She’s too busy living! She has too much to do!
These days, the Polio still wears on Mom. She is suffering from Post-Polio Syndrome, the result of almost 60 years of the muscles that survived the disease pulling extra duty. They are tired. She’s following the prescribed “brace and pace” method of coping. She wears a leg brace and she rests more often than she used to. But her spirit, her strength, is undiminished. And her example, her positive influence on her children and grandchildren, will continue for generations to come.
