Note #1 We’ll Start at the Very Beginning They say that Love Birds were carriers of the disease known as polio. At 7 months of age, in 1953, my loving parents took my brother and me to a pet shop. I was an infant and they held me up next to the love birds’ cage. A week later I was fighting for my life. Back then, doctors came to the house.
They insisted I had the flu yet ignored critical symptoms like inability to hold my head up; my right arm just dropping when they lifted it but I only had a temperature of 99 and the doctor ignored my mother’s plea. My outer strength came from my mom, Ida.
She realized there was something very wrong and went and got a medical book. She read it from cover to cover and finally hit the chapter on polio. She realized I fell victim to this dreaded disease and called the doctor back and demanded to bring a physician who knew what polio was and could identify it.
Shortly thereafter two doctors walked into my home. The expert specialist just looked at me across the room and said call an ambulance, this boy has polio. Over the next seven months I fought for my life.
There were two types of polio and I had them both. Bulbar (affecting breathing & swallowing) and another that affected my muscles and paralyzed my right arm, upper left arm, part of my left leg and the right side of my diaphragm.
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