Call Me Patty

I beat myself up, get in my own way and my crutches hate me! No I'm not crazy, well maybe a little crazy. Let me tell you about myself, my name is Patty and I'm a polio survivor. This is my story living with polio.

I am the second of seven kids to a father, who had a third grade education and was a hard working man as a farmer, my mom was seven year's younger than my dad. I don't know how they met because they came from such different backgrounds. My mom came from a family of twelve children and she graduated from high school at the age of seventeen and married dad when she was eighteen, her father worked for the railroad, they lived on a farm, on a hill with lot's of land. My dad is the youngest of three boys. His family are farmers that go back many generations. I didn't know my dad's mother, she died when I was very young, but I did know his father, my grandfather, we would go visit him with dad, my biggest memory of him is he would always have imitation Oreo cookies, they weren't my favorite but I would eat them anyway. He also had no bathroom only an outhouse, which I refused to use.

On March nineteenth, nineteen forty nine my parents married and by January of nineteen fifty my sister Lois was born. February of fifty one I was born. When I was three years old I went with two of my favorite aunt's, Margaret and Rosemary to Michigan to be in a wedding as a flower girl for a cousin. I don't have many memories of that time, I remember sitting in between my aunts on an airplane. That's all I have. When I came home my mother said that I told her I was never going away again. Wow was I wrong!

Wasn't long after that, that I got sick, at first they weren't sure what was wrong with me, I do remember walking up the stairs and my legs were too weak to lift. I remember mom saying to me to pick up my legs, I remember how weak they felt, I couldn't get them to work. At the time polio was going around in the area. Because we didn't live in the more populated areas the polio vaccine was not available to us. It had just been made available, to the public, you could say it was in the early stages of testing. Turns out it saved a lot of lives. For me it was too late.

When they got me to the hospital I was in critical condition and they weren't sure if I was going to survive. I can't imagine how hard that was for my mother, who was pregnant with my sister Mary Jo. Knowing that your child might not make it had to be incredibly difficult for both my parents. I don't know how the virus attacks the body, I only know how it affected me. Most polio victims were put in a iron lung, what today would be the ventilator to help them breathe, because for some it paralyzed the diaphragm. Fortunately that was not my case, the polio mainly paralyzed my right hip and leg. Which left me with a leg two inches shorter than my
Left leg.

At the time there were not many options for treatment, they were basically experimenting with different treatments and corrective braces and surgeries, both of which I was part of. They admitted me into a hospital that was two hours away from our home. It was a hospital for crippled children, they treated polio patients there. Yes that was the name of it, crippled children, not politically correct today. I don't have any memories of being there at that time, only what I was told, when my parents came to visit I didn't even talk to them, even when they asked me a question. I can't help but think that had to be traumatic for such a young child who stated weeks ago that she was never going to leave home again.

When I was discharged from there, I came home with a metal brace on my right side, from my hip to my foot, and attached to the brace were high top brown leather shoes, they were hideous, and yet that was what I had to wear. I went from cute little white Mary Janes to these awful shoes. I wore that style shoe until I was a teenager, then it was saddle shoes, which I didn't mind as much, but by the mid sixties they were no longer the in thing either. Had no choice but to suck it up and wear them with a little bit of self respect. By the time I hit my teenage years I had been in and out of the hospital so many times I lost count, by then I had two sisters and two brothers. Lois and I were very close then and everywhere she went I went with her. It was also when we started noticing boys. The boys were noticing her, my self esteem was very low, who would want to date someone with a leg brace and crutches? Sadly no one, at least in my case. I would always hear about how pretty Lois was but I had a better personality than she did, oh yah, that will help your self esteem, not! One incident stands out for me, when I turned sixteen and I was soon to go into the hospital for one of my last surgeries, which was to help me get rid of my brace, I told my friend and her boyfriend about it, her boyfriend's answer to me was, "good, maybe you will get a boyfriend then", yes he really did say that!
Needless to say my confidence was very low at that time. I did get rid of my brace and I did get a boyfriend, I know had I met him before I got rid of the brace he would still be my boyfriend!
He is now the love of my life and my lifetime partner and husband for fifty one years and counting.