Post-Polio Syndrome: The Battle Continues

Unlike the battle against cancer, most people probably believe the battle against polio ended decades ago with breakthrough vaccines. The disease, however, has left a hidden and cruel legacy for many who survived it. CBS medical correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin reports.

Joanne Kelly's childhood was defined by polio. As a March of Dimes poster child, her ringlet-framed face often upstaged the celebrities with whom she posed. But at 13 years old, when her leg braces were removed, she never looked back.

"When I went off to college, I forgot about polio," says Kelly. "I married; I became a teacher; I had a son, and the years went by. It wasn't until 1990 that I started to notice things."

What she noticed was a weakening of her upper body--pains, aches, and fatigue--the hallmarks of an emerging phenomenon called post-polio syndrome.

"When these folks had polio they lost at least 50% of the nerves in their spinal cord and in the brain stem," says Richard Bruno, MD, of the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. "Over the course of time, the nerves that remained after the polio infection…took over the function of the nerves that were killed."

The result is that more than 1 million polio survivors, like Chris Templeton, an actress, have spent their lives overworking their already damaged nervous systems. Fifty years after the major polio epidemic, people like Templeton find their bodies are failing.

"I blew out my wrist because I use a cane all the time and because I was lifting weights all the time," says Templeton.

Post-polio syndrome is not only a physical challenge. It opens old psychological wounds as well. People who thought they had licked the disease when they were children are now being told they may need braces and wheelchairs again.

Kelly is back in leg braces after having eight operations to get out of them. She has since retired from work.

"It's like climbing a hill and when you almost think you're getting to the top, this big boulder comes and just flattens you and you're knocked down again," says Kelly.

It seems an unjust sentence for a group of people who have already overcome so much. Now they're being told the best thing they can do is slow down. Doctors say the only remedy for post-polio syndrome is rest.

"Polio survivors now realize the more they use it, they lose it. They have to conserve to preserve," says Bruno.

For more information on post-polio syndrome, tap into the March of Dimes Web site.
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