Our next meeting will be at St. Luke's Lutheran Church on Union at Maryvale on September 17 (Wednesday) at 7:15 p.m. We hope you will take time to join us. We will be showing the video, Nurse's Station with discussion and refreshments after the showing. We hear that Dr. Julie Silver has collaborated in writing a new book on Post Polio Syndrome that is designed to help doctors deal with the condition. When We can get our hands on a copy it will be reviewed in a future newsletter. Meanwhile, here is a review of another book about polio you may want to read:
Don’s Book Review
BROKEN YESTERDAYS,
By Joseph William Meagher (2003)
Xlibris Corporation.
This is a stark portrayal of what it was like to be a polio survivor (or one of those afflicted with any of numerous conspicuous infirmities) in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. This was the time before people with disabilities began being mainstreamed into the general population, before the Americans with Disabilities Act, and before there was meaningful sensitivity to the worth of individuals notwithstanding their physical handicaps.
The author effectively described the events of the period from his point of view as a young polio
survivor whose limbs were functional, but whose back was “twisted”. He wove together such disparate events as his exclusion by his grade school teachers from participating in kiddie musical shows and plays, his being consigned to a segregated facility for ‘BLIND, CRIPPLED AND DEFECTIVE CHILDREN” (So designated on a sign at the entrance), and his meeting with the then governor of New York and future president who studiously avoided being photographed in a wheelchair.
While there are humorous episodes in the book, the reader must fight back his own tears when he reads of the plight of some of the author’s fellow classmates. The book is dominated by dark events such as the torment of a teenage graduate of the facility, without any family and unable to walk because of polio, crying because he was being sent on to a state facility where he would have nothing to do except stare at the walls for the rest of his life. Then there was the tragedy of another of the author’s fellow inmates, a young boy afflicted with an apparently cancerous condition. Although the child had parents and a large number of other relatives, none of them ever visited him until the funeral ceremony after his death. (They were all “unable” to visit him because they were all needed to operate the family’s restaurant in New Jersey.)
Today, there are opportunities for people with disabilities and the public is more willing to accept their role in daily life. I recommend this book if you are interested in seeing how far we have come in a relatively few years. It is gripping and easy to read.
The author’s wife, who kindly sent us a copy, advised that the book can be purchased on the internet at Orders@Xlibris.com or by phone at 1-888-795-4274, x276, Hardcover, $31.49, Trade paperback, $21.24, or E-book, $8.00. It is probably also available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders and at bookstores.