TOY CARS

Bill McKee

May 1952

My polio story is perhaps not a typical one. It must have begun somewhere near my home in the Melbourne suburb of Carnegie when, at the age of seven years, I contracted the virus in an unknown place and at an unknown time. The first sign of trouble was at breakfast on the first Saturday of the May school holidays in 1952. According to my mother, I had been uncharacteristically fractious at this time, although I have no memory of this. What I do remember is painting some toy cars with silver paint later that morning. I began to feel strange and managed to tip over the paint container. Feeling unwell and upset I went inside and uttered the time-honoured words `Mum, I don't feel well' or `Mum, I feel sick' or something along those lines. This was at a time when doctors routinely made house calls, even at weekends, and my mother wanted to call the family GP immediately. My father objected, saying that the boy was only getting a cold, or something like that. Apparently, my condition worsened and the doctor arrived after lunch. I was in bed by this time and don't recall his initial visit but he summoned a specialist, Mr Hughes, and I can remember having to push against the palm of his hand with my thumb, but not much else.

I later learned that Mr Hughes was of the opinion that the infection would be either polio or meningitis but he would have to wait until further symptoms developed before arriving at a definitive diagnosis which turned out to be polio. For some reason I was not sent to the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital but was nursed at home by my mother who, as was common in those days, did not have paid employment outside the home. I remember nothing more of this period but was later told that I had been feverish and delusional for a few days. My first memory after that initial day was being carried by my father and placed in the bath. This was probably a couple of weeks after the day described above. He told me that I had had polio, but this meant nothing to me. I had heard the term already but had no concept of what it implied.

It was only about a month after that Saturday that I returned to school and I can recall standing to attention at Monday morning assembly and being asked by a kindly teacher if it was true that I had contracted polio. It remains a mystery as to how I did get the virus as there were no other cases at the school, nor in surrounding areas, at the time.

The Aftermath

My education proceeded, seemingly unimpaired by my absence of a few weeks. The family GP was one Horace Oswald Johnson (or Johnston, I cannot recall now), a dour Scot in his fifties who had seen many polio cases in his career. He was known to his patients and to hospital staff as `Ozzie', but not to his face of course. Anyway, he told my parents that their son would not be as energetic as other children and would need a lot of rest. And so it proved to be. I would often go straight to bed after returning from school in the afternoon and would frequently be too tired to go to school on some mornings. This would sometimes be a convenient excuse for avoiding unpleasant classes such as woodwork on Wednesday mornings of the first two years of high school. Fortunately, my parents had kept my report cards from high school and I recently looked at them. The number of days missed per term kept decreasing as time went on and was at a normal level by the time I had reached fourteen or thereabouts.

In 1956 I commenced secondary school at McKinnon High School (now called McKinnon Secondary College) which had opened in 1954 to meet the needs of the growing post-war population in the burgeoning south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Due to my mother's asthma, we moved to Mildura in May 1959 on medical advice. This proved to be a good move as the warmer, drier climate was much better for her than that of cold, wet Melbourne. Mildura High School (now called Mildura Senior College) was a good school and I benefited from the small class sizes, particularly in the final two years.

My father was a rather impetuous man (a trait present in his father and even in myself) who tended not to think of the long-term consequences of his decisions. This was evident in the choice of Mildura as the place to which we should move when Adelaide, Perth and even Toowoomba were suggested as alternatives. The problem was that it was taken for granted that I would go to university and would be the first person in my family to do so. Now, I was an only child who had nearly died at birth and had survived polio. This made my parents excessively over-protective. They were insistent that we all moved to a city with an established university and a suitable climate. Adelaide was the obvious choice and we moved there early in 1962. If only he had thought this matter through in 1959, we would not have had this second disruption.

Anyway, my years at the University of Adelaide and later at Flinders University were productive ones and I later went on to Cambridge (without my parents!) to do a PhD. After that, I was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod for 17 months before returning to Australia late in 1972.

The Effects of Polio

The physical effects of polio on my body were not severe. It does not appear that my case was one of paralytic polio and I did not receive any immediate rehabilitative treatment. My legs are perhaps a little weaker than I would like but the main physical aftermath of polio is kyphosis and scoliosis of the spine. Scoliosis is the one which has caused me the most difficulty over the years. Actual pain is rare but daily discomfort of varying degrees as well as disruption of sleep are the norm. The discomfort is usually relieved by lying on the floor or ground and rolling around, often to the amusement of onlookers - their problem, not mine! The effects of polio on my body are more of a nuisance than anything else - inconvenient, sometimes limiting, but not a major impediment to day-to-day living and I have never used them an excuse to avoid responsibilities of various kinds. I have learned to live within the limitations imposed upon me by my situation.

Until quite recently, I have participated in physical activities of various types. At Cambridge, I even rowed for my College in the `bumps' races two years running. This was probably unwise but was quite enjoyable at the time. In the 1970s I played squash quite regularly and even managed to break my arm playing soccer. From 1979 until about 2008 I played tennis more or less every week until knee problems dictated that I stop. At the same time I also stopped regular bushwalking for the same reason.

Of greater consequence for me was the almost permanent propensity to tire easily and the consequent lack of energy and the need for a lot of rest. Throughout my working life as a university lecturer, I would routinely spend one day each weekend resting in bed and it was a luxury to be able to sometimes come home from work early and go to bed for an hour or two. One of the many good things about retirement is that I can now get as much rest as I need (or should that be want rather than need?).

Physiotherapy

Although I did not receive any rehabilitative treatment immediately after recovering, my parents later sent me for some physiotherapy. The first was essentially back massage from one Percy Pearce in Kew who, amongst other things, ran the Melbourne branch of the Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture. To answer the obvious question: no, this organisation was not associated with that other polio survivor Sir Joh but had been founded in Queensland by one of his relatives. In Mildura, I went to a Miss Pat Maloney for physio but I cannot recall what she actually did. For the first couple of years in Adelaide, I attended a government clinic somewhere in the suburbs which was eventually closed. One of their treatments was refered to as `the gallows' and was an attempt to somehow straighten the spine by attaching a harness around the head while the patient was in a sitting position. This harness was attached to a rope which was looped over a pulley. Weights were placed on the other end of the rope and the victim, er patient, thus had their neck stretched for about twenty minutes. It was uncomfortable and almost certainly ineffective. Their other line of attack was to force the patient to sleep on his back. At first, a sort of corset was sewn on to the bottom bedsheet and fastened around the victim's chest. After a few weeks of this, the victim was supposed to be accustomed to sleeping on his back and was ready to proceed to stage two which required him to sleep on a wooden bench with boards sticking out vertically which prevented him from turning over. It was impossible to sleep like this and my parents decided to abandon this part of the treatment since it was interfering with my studies. The gallows and other more benign stretching exercises continued on a weekly basis until this clinic closed. Treatment was continued by a physiotherapist on North Terrace just opposite the University of Adelaide. Fortunately, she had no gallows and just gave massage and normal stretching exercises. This sort of thing continued at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge for a while but eventually they decided that they did not want to see me any more. Apart from a bit more back massage for a couple of years after I returned to Australia in 1972 I have not had any polio-related physiotherapy since then.

The Present Situation (October 2011)

I do not consider that I have post-polio syndrome. Certainly, I don't seem to have any of the characteristic features of PPS. The problem of overwhelming exhaustion is no worse now than when I was young. However, I do seem to be having more back trouble which now seems to be concentrated on the right side of the spine between the shoulder blades. This is where the lateral curvature of my spine is greatest. Many years ago, the pain or discomfort seemed to be located on both sides of the spine just above the pelvis. Of all the polio survivors I have met in the PPN, I think I must be just about the one whose body has been least affected by polio. For this reason, I believe that my polio story is not a typical one, but one worth telling all the same.