Polio Place

A service of Post-Polio Health International

feelings

Husband "Needs" the Information

Post-Polio Health, Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2014.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology.

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Divorced and Ready to Date But....

Post-Polio Health, Volume 29, Number 1, Winter 2013

Dr. Stephanie T. Machell is a psychologist in independent practice in the Greater Boston area and consultant to the International Rehabilitation Center for Polio, Spaulding-Framingham Outpatient Center, Framingham, Massachusetts. Her father is a polio survivor.

Question: I am a 49-year-old female with PPS. I am divorced and finally feel ready to date again. I find that some potential partners want to be intimate first before developing an emotional bond. This causes me a lot of anxiety.

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Lonely, but Dating?

Post-Polio Health, Volume 28, Number 3, Summer 2012.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology. She is a polio survivor and single mother of two grown children.

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Don't Tell Anyone About Your Polio

"Promoting Positive Solutions," Post-Polio Health, Volume 28, Number 3, Dr. Stephanie T. Machell

Question: I found out I had polio when I was 55 years old. My mother’s explanation was that “the doctor told me not to tell anyone.” Can you help me understand why this was told to parents?

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Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

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.

My friend Mary called with what she termed a dilemma: She has a friend whose mother won’t take a bath. “It’s been three months,” she said. “The woman refuses to bathe. Her daughter promises her a night out at her favorite restaurant if she’ll clean up, but she won’t do it.”

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More Worry as I Age

From the series, Polio Survivors Ask, by Nancy Baldwin Carter, B.A, M.Ed.Psych, from Omaha, Nebraska, is a polio survivor, a writer, and is founder and former director of Nebraska Polio Survivors Association.

Q: The older I get, the older my friends and families are, and it seems that they have one illness after another. Then there are the kids and grandkids, all with their hectic lives. I worry about them; I worry about the state of the world; I worry about the cost of things; I worry about my money lasting.

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Fear of Using a Cane

From the series, Polio Survivors Ask, by Nancy Baldwin Carter, B.A, M.Ed.Psych, from Omaha, Nebraska, is a polio survivor, a writer, and is founder and former director of Nebraska Polio Survivors Association.

Q: A friend who had polio told me that since he uses a cane, people give him more room so he has less fear of being bumped by others. He wishes he used it a few years earlier. Me, too! How can we help people “get over” the fear of looking disabled?

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Feelings of Sadness

From the series, Polio Survivors Ask, by Nancy Baldwin Carter, B.A, M.Ed.Psych, from Omaha, Nebraska, is a polio survivor, a writer, and is founder and former director of Nebraska Polio Survivors Association.

Q: Every now and then I get a feeling of sadness over losses that I associate with my aging with polio.

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A Sister Remembers

Mary Navarre, OP

When Joan L. Headley, the Executive Director of the Post-Polio Health International, asked me to be on a panel of family members of polio survivors at the convention in St. Louis, I was hesitant to do so as it was, and still is, difficult to talk about my life with my sister who contracted polio at the age of 6 – and even more so to speak about her death four years ago at the age of 64.

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A Paralyzing Fear

Kathleen A. Navarre

My reaction to the film “A Paralyzing Fear” ran the gamut from objective film critic to the very personal reliving of a long repressed event that seemed to happen to someone else, or in another lifetime, but also clearly happened to me.

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