Polio survivor’s fight to live a normal life

Peggy Tingle with Neal Beard (left) and Keith Rohling, president-elect of the Lawrenceburg Rotary Club.

By Neal Beard, a member of the Rotary Club
of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, USA

“I was 18 when I contracted the disease,”
Peggy said, as she spoke into a lowered,
stationary microphone set up at the front
of our meeting room. She spoke from a motor-
ized wheelchair, reading from her notes.

Peggy was the guest speaker at our club meet-
ing recently, and her story underscored for me
why we need to remain committed to eradicat-
ing this terrible disease of polio. Statistics are
one thing, but when you hear someone’s story
who has battled the disease, it takes your emo-
tional resolve to a completely different level.

“I had been married for three years and had a
one-year-old daughter when I contracted polio,”
Peggy continued.

“One evening my husband and a couple of
friends went on a night fishing trip. We girls
decided our treat would be to go out and eat
burgers and shakes and smoke a cigarette.
This was during the ‘50’s…The next morning
I woke up very nauseated with a severe
headache that quickly got worse. The next
day my neck was stiff and very painful. My
husband carried me to the doctor, who put
me in the hospital for a week of test, but
they couldn’t determine what was wrong. I
talked the doctor into letting me go home,
but when I stepped up to go inside, my knee
collapsed and I fell to the floor.”

In the polio ward Peggy saw another doctor
who suspected polio and sent her to Nashville’s
Vanderbilt Hospital, which confirmed it, begin-
ning a year and a half of therapy at the hospital’s
polio treatment center.

“Vanderbilt had an entire floor that was the
polio ward. Many people, all ages, from several
states were there. They had iron lungs, rocking
beds, and portable breathing machines to help
the ones who needed it. There was only one
elevator to that floor. There was a little open-air
room you could visit with relatives on the weekends.”

“I never cried, even when the therapy was very painful.
Sometimes a tear would fall out, but one day the main
doctor came in and rubbed a sharp instrument on the
bottom of my foot. I was able to feel some of it. Then he
said, ‘Wiggle your big toe for me.’ I tried my hardest to
move my big toe but it would not move. That’s when I
finally broke down and cried. To this day, I still cannot
move that big toe.”

Peggy was eventually able to return home, where she
continued therapy there with the use of braces. The
doctors initially told her husband that she would never
walk again, but he kept that opinion from her for more
than 20 year. Without that to deter her, she eventually
learned to walk again, with only a slight limp and halt-
ing step.

“I wanted my family to have a normal mom and a
normal life too,” she said. “If the school asked the
parents to send a cake or pie for some event, I
would send them two. My daughter said that she
never knew that I was crippled until she attended
college.”

Post-polio syndrome

A few years ago, Peggy began to lose the strength
in her legs and her overall endurance began to
wane. Post-polio syndrome, a wearing out of the
good muscles that have been overused to compen-
sate for the atrophied ones, had set in.

She finally had to accept the fact that she needed
a motorized wheelchair to get around.  In addition,
she purchased a specially designed mini-van with
sliding side door and access ramp. It is even equip-
ped with hand controls for braking and acceleration
to allow her to drive.

Peggy’s story moved our members to donate more
than $3,000 to the PolioPlus campaign and our club
isn’t finished yet. I hope her story will motivate you
to help us End Polio Now.

Thank you and God bless you Peggy Tingle.