@ricci thank you to share such a personal and touching story.

A hug to you and your mom!

@ricci

My uncle has gone through the same. He was in an iron lung as a child.

@ricci I worked for decades as a massage therapist. One of my regular clients was an older woman with grown children.

She had had polio as a child, and it left her with uneven legs and a very deformed spine.

She did go on to live a happy and productive and connected life with her husband and children and co-workers. But as you say, she also lived with lifelong physical limitations and chronic pain. A sobering reminder of just how important and effective vaccines and all modern medicines are.

My own parents were born before vaccines, before antibiotics. I remember them telling stories from their childhoods. Times when the family would leave town and "vacation" at campgrounds in tents away from other people. Times when, "No, you can't go visit Mary to play now. She has Diphtheria." Or measles. Or pneumonia.

My dad nearly died of pneumonia at age four. All they could do was keep him covered and propped up in bed with his little stuffy Laddy Dog and wait, while his fever raged on and on, his lungs filled with fluid, and he survived by breathing (panting) with the inch of clear lung he had left.

When my own kids were little and feeling nervous about getting shots, I would tell them about their grandparents, and let them hold Laddy Dog, and tell them they were doing such a good thing because they weren't just protecting themselves, they were taking care of all the other people around them.

#storytelling #vaccines #polio

@ricci

Much appreciated cautionary tale.

@ricci I'm friends with someone who got an early version of the polio vaccine. She has issues walking and staying balanced - I think the lower part of one leg just sort of dangles but I'm not totally confident.

If that's what the vaccine did, I don't want to have people newly learning what the full-blown disease does.

@ricci Thank you for this story. My dad was able to avoid getting polio, despite a massive outbreak in the Chicago area in 1937, because his mother fled with her two young boys to live with family nearly 200 miles away in Two Rivers, Wis. He rarely saw his father, who stayed behind to work in the foundry in Rockford, for about 10 years. He and his brother remained healthy, although that came with its own kind of cost.

Today, could anyone self-isolate in a country that has 3x the population?

@ricci

Not vaccinating your children, absent a legit medical issue like allergy to ingredients or an insufficient immune system, is child abuse.

Change my mind.

@ricci

There's also been a lot of talk about drinking raw milk,

if you drink raw milk, you can get spinal tuberculosis (estimated 15% of tuberculosis is via bovine-tb, raw milk - and TB is one of the world's biggest killers, surpassed by covid, but bad - and curable, but poor people not being helped by the rich, awesome)

my gran had spinal TB a long time ago, and was lying in hospital for a year being treated - not fun

@ricci I am looking for sources. But this reminds me of the disabled peoples protests. Folks afflicted with polio were a large chunk of protestors that eventually got the ADA signed into law.

I'm frustrated that people don't know (and some blissfully don't care) at the amount of suffering that went on before vaccines.

Being disabled is OK. Being willfully ignorant and then ending up disabled, or infecting someone and having them become disabled... is far from ok. [Just, many emotions]