In
1953, Carrie Cline
Pike, now of Gold
Hill, Ore., contracted
polio at age 18 while
employed by a large
pharmaceutical laboratory
seeking a cure for
the disease. The laboratory
had live polio virus
samples, the virus
was mishandled, and
her entire workplace
contracted the virus.
Most of her co‑workers
died.
“I
had an extreme headache
that day and went
home,” said Pike,
in a telephone interview,
who reads this column
in the Rogue River
Press in Oregon. “Others
had gone home the
day before. That evening
my mother called the
doctor, who came to
our home. I went in
an ambulance to the
hospital and was put
into isolation.”
She
had extreme back pain,
a paralyzed left arm,
leg, and side of her
throat, and would
be on an iron lung
machine for almost
eight months.
Pike
proved the doctors
wrong.
“Three
doctors said I would
never walk again,”
she related. “I recovered
so beautifully no
one could believe
it. I not only learned
to walk again, but
went to nursing school,
entering it with braces
on my leg and arm.”
She eventually became
an emergency room
nurse, an avid hiker,
a downhill skier and
a licensed pilot.
“You
can accomplish a lot
if you let your mind
go beyond the barriers
of your disability,”
she said of her life.
Then
in the early 1990s,
a physician determined
she had post‑polio
syndrome. The U.S.
has more than 400,000
polio survivors, and
perhaps half have
PPS. A National Institutes
of Health web site
defines it as “a condition
that affects polio
survivors anywhere
from 10‑40 years
after recovery from
an initial paralytic
attack of the poliomyelitis
virus.” Symptoms can
include fatigue, further
weakening of polio‑affected
muscles, difficulty
swallowing, joint
pain and muscular
atrophy.
Today,
Pike's symptoms include
sleeping and night
breathing difficulties,
muscle weakness in
both legs and occasional
falling while walking.
At times she uses
a power wheelchair,
but prefers walking.
She has trouble going
up and down stairs.
Now
retired, she and her
husband moved from
Texas to Oregon in
2006 to be near family.
At first she felt
frustrated not being
able to find a family
doctor who knew anything
at all about polio,
let alone PPS.
She
counsels people with
PPS to have “a positive
attitude and to do
what you can do for
as long as you can
do it.”
For
more, see danieljvance.com
. This column made
is possible by a grant
from Blue Valley Sod,
bluevalleysod.com.
