I’ve known one. My seamstress’s younger sister was a polio survivor: she was bedridden and blind since age 10. Nowadays she would probably have been in a wheelchair instead, but back in the 50s when she got sick no-one thought of such a possibility, nor of getting her any kind of exercise; at one point she and their mother (who had Alzheimer’s) moved into the same assisted care facility and one thing she loved about being there is that she would get rolled out into the garden. Every summer the family would go back to the village, which involved some very complicated logistics to get Ana into and off the trains; other than that, she’d spend her whole year in two beds (one in my hometown, one in the village). These women were of an age where vaccines were already available, but hadn’t reached their village in a poor area of Spain, so they hadn’t been vaccinated: a small epidemic killed several people, mostly children. Vaccines were shipped to the area and people who hadn’t gotten sick yet were given it, according to Isabel (the seamstress).
I’ve seen quite a few middle-aged people in Asia who seem to have useless legs. Not just thin from being wheelchair bound, but sort of thin and twisted, maybe even shrunken. I always wondered if that was because of polio.
I’m 28. My 8th grade science teacher had it as a kid. You’d never know it, except she couldn’t lift her hands above her shoulders. Since she was only about 5’1" anyway, she wrote everything [sub]really low[/sub] on the board.
I’m 43. I knew a little boy in the early '70s who had had polio. He walked with crutches (actually hauled ass is more like it) with his one useless leg pinned up behind him in a kind of harness.
Also, my high school French teacher had polio and had one leg that was very skinny. She always wore a skirt so it was obvious. After my school closed, she applied for a job at my dad’s company but he didn’t hire her because of the leg thing. “Appearances matter!” I thought that was kind of dickish of him.
39, I had a patient (early 50s maybe?) who had polio. He was originally from Pakistan and had contracted it there. His walking was slowed and and his gait was a little ‘off’ as a result.
I’m 51. There was a boy in the year above me in secondary school in London who had had polio and wore a leg-iron. He was Afro-Caribbean but was probably born in the UK. He was also memorable for having the surname Powell, which meant that he was always known as “Enoch”.
Nope - or rather not that I’m aware of. I’m sure that there were people older than I am who had it, but have never said anything - and I usually don’t inquire into someone’s limp. I remember getting vaccines in school, I think for polio, yet, in the early 1970s.
On a related note, we were showing our kids our smallpox vaccine scars. They thought the whole thing very strange, particularly how we both have them (and EVERYONE of a certain age has them) and they don’t.
I had a classmate in grade school who wore a leg brace because of polio. She seemed to do okay with it, though - I don’t remember her having a particularly bad limp, and she took gym class and played at recess the same as the rest of us.
I’m almost 60. One of my best friends from high school had polio and the only obvious lasting effect was a rather odd swaybacked posture. He was a pretty good sandlot athlete despite that and seems to be in good health to this day.
I also had another friend, about ten years older who had the disease with no obvious lasting results until he came down with post-polio syndrome. It was quite debilitating from time to time. He has since passed away from unrelated causes.
I’m 40. My mother had it when she was 8. She’s 73 now.
It left her with a stunted leg. You’d never know it from the way she walks, but if you happen to look at her calves, one never developed much, the calf muscle is much skinnier than normal.
Her feet are about a half size different as well. Not really enough to cause problems buying shoes.
It only bothers her when she’s on her feet for a long time. Overall, she’s in great shape - she walks fast for 45 minutes 3-5 times a week, and has always been active. So it hasn’t caused her much problem, other than when it originally happened. I can’t imagine the fear her parents must have had.
I remember geting the vaccines. Sixty-two here. A brother and sister a year younger than I both had polio before they were old enough to go to school in our small, rural town. They’ve walked with a limp all their lives.
We have an adult friend of our age who has a weakened leg and has suffered recently with that setback syndrome that comes later in life. Can’t think of what it’s called.
I shudder to think of how frightening all those Sister Kenney newsreels were. The children with all those cumbersome braces and crutches struggling to walk and the terrifying iron lungs. I remember seeing whole wards of young people flat on their backs in these iron coffins seeing the world through those mirrors attached to the machines.
We also took The March of Dimes very seriously and made posters to support the cause.
Remember the mental connection with the Sabin vaccine with its little pink drop on a sugar cube and the not-so-much later LSD on sugar cubes?
I have a relative that is alive that had it. I knew somebody that has a relative that had Polio. So I met two people that are alive that had Polio. I’m almost 50. There are dead relatives that had Polio. My mother knew them.
My first cousin had polio when he was eight or nine. He’s been in a wheelchair ever since (he’s 60-ish), and is currently degenerating slowly because of Post Polio Syndrome.
My girlfriend’s father had it as a child, and can’t walk without crutches or other assistance because of it. Other than that, he’s fine; he’s a very successful physician in Taiwan. I’m 25.
I’m 50 (born 1959) and I remember at least one vaccine dose being administered to me as a kid. I’m sure I’d had a dose even before then, just don’t remember it.
About 20 years back, I worked with a woman who was perhaps 10 years older than I was - and got polio just a year or two before the vaccine became available in the mid-1950s. She walked with a substantial limp but was otherwise pretty functional. No clue how she’s doing these days; I’ve heard of “post polio” syndrome that strikes victims decades after they were initially ill. It hadn’t hit her yet at that point.
I’m 49. When I was in grade school, the neighbor lady across the street was a polio survivor, and it left her with respiratory paralysis. During the day she was in a rocking bed, and spent her nights in an iron lung.
One aunt had it, but I never really saw her and am not sure what effects she had from it. I met a lot of older people who’d had polio as children and had various long-term conditions because of it; I volunteered for a while on a geriatric ward, so knew the medical statuses of more elderly people than the average person my age would.
More unusually, a girl at school a year older than me had polio and was confined to a wheelchair. She’d be 35 now. Her parents had refused all vaccinations.
My sister-in-law had it. She got it before the vaccines were released, and fortunately came through relatively unscathed.
I’m 54, and had both the Sabin and Salk vaccines.