I have spent hours and even days wondering what my life would have been like had polio passed me by. Currently I cannot walk without crutches and must use a wheelchair for any distances. Nonetheless, I have been blessed with a wonderful life, great experiences of visiting 12 different countries, financial security and a great loving family topped off by an incredible marriage of 41 years. Without polio, I am convinced none of this would have been possible. I don’t want to mislead anyone, a child coping with the medical, physical, emotional and societal pressures of Polio was an enormous event. My own situation with polio in 1946 at age 2 was fairly typical – paralysis, iron lung and then the slow and painful years of treatment with hot packs and more experimental operations to help growth, slow growth, spinal fusions etc. I spent almost half my childhood in hospitals and institutions.
My parents, Bless them, coped with my Polio as best they could. But with other children to raise and never enough money to do much, they poured whatever Love they could muster into me. My special grandfather provided me with the wisdom and prayers that gave me tremendous strength. I am blessed with a good memory and can remember just about all of those experiences. Yet through it all, my body and mind adapted and compensation techniques learned allowed me to at least walk and go to school with “normal” kids…some of the time. Like any kid, childhood can be rough in spots. Without question, our family might as well have been quarantined for all the “shunning” we experienced. Outsiders were afraid of catching polio from us. Being called a “cripple” hurt at first but after awhile I became immune to it.
But what did this traumatic experience of having Polio teach me? That is the question I guess I’ve wrestled with all my Life and in particular yesterday, a quiet rainy Sunday. My conclusion, is I have been Lucky. For some reason, G-d shined his love and benefits on me. I don’t deserve my good fortune any more than I deserved my Polio. Others of you may not been so Lucky and for that I am sad. But here is a list of some observations I have made about the years of struggling to overcome the ravages of this disease.
1. I learned to smile. My earliest memory was of being in an Iron Lung, scared, listening to all the other children crying loudly. For whatever reason, I learned how to SMILE, beautifully for I learned that in smiling I got the attention from the harried nurses more often and more quickly than those children who always cried. I even practiced my smile in the little mirrors that hung on the top of the device. For my whole Life, people have loved my smile and they gravitated toward me, particularly women. I never had a problem attracting women, bad limp, short stature, and all.
2. Because I could not play like other children, my play was strictly internally generated “fantasy.” I built a vivid and creative imagination mainly because I had to. This creativity was a boon to my Business career as I always was able to “think outside the box” long before it became a fashionable thing for people to do.
3. I never had much formal schooling as a child, some home-based tutoring, the classes at the State Hospital for Crippled Children with some public school. Instead, I became a voracious reader. I had time available by the bucketfuls. I didn’t read books, I consumed them, by the thousands. I would take whatever books were on the rolling carts – history, biographies, science books as well as novels. My knowledge base grew enormously – much more than any conventional schooling would have brought me. High School and College proved to be no challenge whatsoever as a result.
4. I learned empathy and compassion as a result of those years in Polio wards. As the great epidemics swept across America, the hospitals were filled to overcapacity with sick children. Many were far from home and family – sick and alone. Many never got weekend visitors or mail. I learned to take the cards my Mom and Dad would send and stick a few pieces of candy (smuggled in and hidden in the mattress so it would not get confiscated) inside the card. Since those cards were just signed “love Mom and Dad” they were generic enough so that I could give them to others along with the candy and they would never know it wasn’t from their Mom and Dad. If someone was REALLY down, I could give that child my chocolate pudding – the ultimate Hospital treat. But most of all, I developed a sixth sense as to when a child was failing so bad he was about to die. In the Polio wards we were strapped down at night so one nurse could handle the 40 boys in the ward. But I learned to bunch up my blanket under me so that I could pull it out at night and I would have enough room to turn over on my tummy and reach and unbelt the straps. I would crawl out under all the beds to reach Dale, or William or whoever needed that comfort. I know not why G-d gave me that mission but I held the hands of 6 boys while they died – the first when I was 7 years old. I learned at a very early age the great warmth and positive feelings that come from crying, not for one’s own misery, but for someone else’s. I learned how to Love, not just Like – and that is a lesson that has really aided me in this life.
5. I learned the value of work and initiative. The Hospital staff would always ask the wheelchair kids if they wanted to help with cleaning, beds etc. I always volunteered because I got to go around to all the other wards and meet new kids but most of all, I got to go into that forbidden world of the girls’ wards. I got to meet and talk – really talk – with girls at a young age. To learn they really were not aliens, they had the same fears as I did, the same lonely feelings I had, the same homesickness, the same boredom. I even learned as a teenager they had the same major fear I had of polio, I would either die before I had a chance to have sex or I would be too ugly for anyone to have sex with me. As a result, I have never feared sharing my feelings because I never learned one was supposed to hide feelings. What a glorious experience that has resulted in the half century since.
6. I learned perseverance. Learning to walk and get motor control over weak arms and legs was painful, boring and plain hard work. The hospital had far too many kids to provide intensive physical therapy learning for everyone to walk again. Many kids did not have the drive to go through the process so they set up an effective, but barbaric triage system. They had a small room set up with many grab bars on the 4 walls, with baseball bats hanging on the wall above the grab bars. A nurse then hit the child with a stick. Really good smacks across the fanny. Those kids who pulled themselves off the floor by the grab bars and tried to fight back got the physical therapy. Those that laid there and cried did not, at least not then. I learned to be a fighter, plowing through any obstacle, be it business, social, legal or personal.
7. I learned to be optimistic and positive in life. It did not take a rocket scientist to observe that the children who were depressed and negative about their situation quickly withered. Some seemed to die then, and some weren’t able to pull up out of the disease psychologically… this seemed to affect some who never recovered most of their abilities. I believed this: If you can’t believe in yourself and your future as positives, then they won’t be. As I look back, I honestly believe my life, without polio, would have been very mundane and ordinary. I have a treasure trove of memories, some bad but mostly good, but experiences most people in this world never have. Polio is a disease for sure, but we all could have had it much worse. We could be born in the backwaters of Africa or have become alcoholics or addicts, for example. For me, if I died tomorrow, I would have no regrets – for without my polio, I would not be the man that I am today.
By John LeDell (Republished with permission from themoderatevoice.com)
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