Gina Allan Evans: Polio stories - personal recollections of the polio epidemic of the 1940s and 1950s

This recollection was kindly contributed by Gina Allan Evans, Auckland.

Gina Allan-Evans Polio story 1953

Disabled by Polio virus at 9 years of age in 1953, then experiencing Polio a second time through the live viral vaccination in 1955 left me with a lot of memories of pain, loneliness and deep sadness.

I had been driven home from school Friday afternoon by the headmaster, in the back of his station wagon after spending most of the day in sick bay feeling very sick. When I arrived home my mother sent me to have a hot bath and then to go to bed. She was in bed awaiting the birth of her last child, a boy called Frank who died before I could even see him.

Saturday morning, I woke up with an awful migraine and tried to get up out of bed to go to the toilet. I fell onto the floor and could not lift my head or body and while I could move my arms a bit my legs did not work at all. Crying, I called for help from mother but she told me to get myself to the toilet, I was not a baby. I remember pulling myself with great difficulty along the ground but I could not get up onto the toilet seat and so laid crying in a mess. My mother tried to make me stand up but at that stage I was like a rag doll, all my limbs just dangling with no substance to them. My mother sent my sister on her bike 15 kilometers to get a doctor, who arrived shortly after her return home. She took my temperature, 104 and rang for an ambulance to take me to Auckland Hospital. My arrival left me with the image of being driven backwards into the parking bay alone, scared and with the worst headache I had ever experienced.

Alone, I went through another invasive examination which was the last thing I remembered for some weeks until I woke up in a round noisy machine pushing against my chest making me breath. At first, I remember it was in a hall and people passed but did not come near me. The next thing I remember was waking in a small room, really just big enough to take the machine and the nurses to walk around the sides to change my bedding…I had a pajama top on backwards. I don’t recall eating in the machine, only the noise and the pain and loneliness and the lying in my own excrement wet and cold.

I had no visitors. When I was removed from the Iron lung and placed in ward 22 my bed was covered with an oxygen tent and the curtains were pulled around the bed so I never saw her were in the beds around me. As I was 9 years old, I was told to keep the younger ones quiet, talk to them and stop them from crying. We were a ward of lonely sick children who hardly had contact except when it was time for lumber punches and food and bed changes.

Lumber pinches were done often with the command to turn on my side with the help of a nurse and rolled into a position holding my knees under my chin. A rather large and extremely think need introduced to my spine would cause me to faint with the pain.  In the end I use to faint just seeing the Dr arrive with the dish holding the needle. To this day I have an unreasonable fear of needles.

I was sent home with instruction to rest. However, my body had other ideas and one Saturday morning my appendix' burst and the put me in the back seat of someone’s car which I made a terrible mess of and back into Auckland Hospital and an emergency operation took place to save my life. After this hospital stay I was sent to Pakaranga Children’s Health Camp were they started therapy on my legs and back with massage and pool work, plus spending time outdoors in the sun just walking.

It seems that I had a body that caught all sorts of viruses as I also had a very severe case of Hong Kong flu and sometime later Asian flu.

In 1955 while at school we were all lined up according to our class and as our name was called out, we stepped forward and were given a little paper cup of vaccine for Polio. I told them I did not need it as I had already had Polio, however, they had the measured dose and cup with my name on it and I had to drink it.

The next morning, I was back in Auckland hospital in an iron lung. This time when I finally went home with leg braces my mother was even more upset with me. She threw the braces away and sent me to Mr. Spicer. Mr. Spicer ran a dance studio out of his garage and he was asked to help me to walk like normal people again. Local children teased me and called me dolphin flapper. My two feet flapped inwards, right foot going in a circle towards the left and the left foot doing the opposite movement. I fell over often and was labeled clumsy. My left leg was left shorter than the right leg.

My life as a very active person working in many different countries around the world required a lot of walking and I used a walking stick from when I was around 45 years old to help with my balance. At home each day started at 6am at the local gym for two and a half hours work out. Starting with a trainer, weights for an hour, followed by 30- minutes on the walking machine and the last hour spent in the pool doing a different set of exercises. 

Although I lived a full life it was also a life spent having operations on my joints yearly until all major joints were replaced and some requiring two replacements. My hands and feet also had multiple operations with insertion of screws and plates.

Until the age of fifty years old I felt and walked as I thought was normal. However, I began falling more often and on hearing about a retreat with an Australian Polio Specialist in Hamilton I was in a position to learn about post-Polio, or as some called it, The Late Effects of Polio. I discovered I was becoming disabled for the third time. Polio is a neurological muscular disease that meant my life proceeded from braces to walking stick to power chair.

I am an overachiever, stubborn some might say, and I did not take kindly to being told I was to go into a powerchair. Damage to my shoulders and hands meant I needed a powerchair to get around. Before this could happen, I had made arrangements to walk Camino. The Pilgrims walk from the South of France alongside and over the Pyrenees Mountains onto the north of Spain to the city of Compostela. One thousand kilometers Rhys and I walked.

The zig zag walk was one that required all my attention and strength with the silent resolve not to give up. Sometimes I fell and would get up only to fall again on the next step.  I had to find knee braces to help finish the walk.

Each night I offered massage to other walkers on their feet and legs to their knees, using a cream I made to help blisters, pain and repair bruising on the bottom of their feet fast leg and leg muscle strain.

My leg muscles jerk and my feet burn and sleeping raised does not help. I have resorted to a bar of toilet soap under my bottom sheet to try and stop the cramps. Sometimes I get cramps in both legs at the same time and the only way to stop them is to stand holding the top window beside the bed.

I suffer from fatigue and sleep 3 to 4 hours a day. I cannot hold my tablet to read and I cannot eat and everything is a huge effort.

The hardest thing to describe is going legless. It happens without warning and it is as if my lower body is instantly removed. One minute I could stand then I was on the ground not able to move my lower limbs.

Az polio was not recognized in NZ as an ongoing disease, no medical aids were afforded me. When I went on superannuation I could not receive a community card to get equipment due to Rhys still working. My power chairs we purchased 2nd hand off Trade me and my hospital bed was 2nd hand from the Hospice shop. The DHB did loan me 2 bed hand rails which are like a large U shape. These help me turn over and sit up in bed. I have walkers Rhys found 2nd hand and walking canes and crutches.

After 5 letters to the DHB in around as many months all declined. I have been given an extra 30 minutes each day tagged on to my personal care for food preparation for a hot midday meal. While not a large parcel in time the extra help with food preparation does save my leg muscles.

No one and nothing prepare you for the horror of becoming crippled again. Yes, I use the word crippled as that is exactly how I see it. Mobility does not describe the way you mourn the loss of your limbs again, your freedom to freely move around. For myself it has been a silent painful journey as Rhys my husband had an accident at work over 8 years ago and has been on ACC since. I have had to fight for 6 operations for him and get him help with all the Post Concussion Syndrome effects.

Gina Allan-Evans