Traveling Without A Spare: A Survivor’s Guide to Navigating the Post-Polio Journey

With a physician’s medical knowledge and a dose of wit and wisdom, Dr. Leff writes a truly informative book that maps the stages and complexities of polio: from the initial virus attack, through recovery to stability and into the latter stages that is post-polio reality. Drawing from his personal experience of contracting polio in 1949, and his forty-plus year career in Internal Medicine, Dr. Leff offers an anecdotal-filled overview of living with polio.

A well-organized Table of Contents and a helpful Index are provided. Easy to read chapters contain good information about weakness, fatigue, pain, breathing, swallowing difficulties and falling. Written from his personal polio perspective, the author offers very practical guides to exercise (swimming-in-bed and beyond-Kegel isometrics), weight control and the restorative power of polio support groups. Dealing with depression and even retirement are addressed.

Carol K. Elliott is a freelance writer/editor and a polio survivor