Living With Polio

Millions of individuals who had polio are living in all areas of the world. Survivors range in age from a few months to nonagenarians (in their nineties). Aftereffects vary greatly depending on the number and location of the nerve cells destroyed by the poliovirus. The challenge or ease of living with polio varies for each survivor, depending on the availability of medical care and rehabilitation opportunities, and their family and social support.

Advice, hints, explanations, etc., are categorized by topic and are searchable. The source of the material is identified.

Reminder: PHI’s post-polio.org and IVUN’s ventusers.org or ventnews.org features numerous articles to assist in living with polio.

Scooter or Power Chair: A Stigma

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: I’m in the market for either a power chair or a scooter and am trying to make up my mind which would be better for me. I’ve heard there’s a stigma associated with using a power chair rather than a scooter. What’s that about?

Can't Care for My Wife Like I Used to Do

Q: I have been my wife’s attendant for many, many years. I am getting older and can’t do what I used to do, but it is still expected of me. How I can broach this topic, without her feeling like she is a burden to me?

Communicating with Grown Children

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: As I get older and accumulate more secondary conditions, it is more difficult for me to get around. Do you have any suggestions as to how to communicate my knowledge about my post-polio health to my grown children when they really don’t want to “hear it”?

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.

Living in Two Worlds – Physically and Spiritually

Vera Trout Moore

While nurses and doctors did a remarkable job of preparing me for life after polio, my life could not have been as rewarding without my spiritual life.

Opportunities to Participate in Research

NEW STUDY ON AFM AND POLIO A new study concerning acute flaccid myelitis (AFM... More

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