Word: postpolio
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Although there is no direct evidence to support the wear-and-tear theory, it does make a lot of sense. It would explain, for example, why so many people are coming down with postpolio syndrome now. The great postwar epidemic peaked in the U.S. in 1952, when more than 20,000 children were paralyzed by polio, and it tapered off in the early '60s, after the Salk vaccine and then the Sabin oral version were introduced. The first wave of postpolio symptoms appeared in the early 1980s, 30 years after the epidemic's peak, and if researchers are correct...
What can be done to help the postpolio sufferers? Not much, unfortunately. There are only experimental treatments. A steroid called prednisone, usually used to treat immune-system diseases like multiple sclerosis, seems to help in postpolio as well, reducing fatigue and increasing endurance. And Dr. Marinos Dalakas at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is experimenting with nerve growth factor, a protein that spurs the proliferation of nerve axons...
...most effective therapy seems to be no therapy at all. Postpolio sufferers are simply advised to take it easy -- to pace themselves, listen to their body and avoid activities that cause them pain. Dr. Halstead, who uses a motorized scooter instead of walking long distances, calls this "babying the motor neurons." His clinic uses sophisticated electromyography equipment that charts the activity of muscle and nerve cells in order to design exercise regimens tailored to each patient's particular weaknesses. The approach is almost the exact opposite of "use it or lose it." Says Dr. Jacquelin Perry, director of the pathokinesiology...
...many patients, postpolio means having to take up the braces and wheelchairs they worked so hard to escape. Stanley Lipshultz, a Washington trial lawyer, is just starting to use the crutches his doctor prescribed. "I had a handicapped license plate on my car for two years before I actually used a handicapped parking space," he confesses. "The hardest part is you feel you're falling apart," says Rena Shnaider, a retired rehabilitative counselor from Oakland, California, who has spent her life in a wheelchair but who drove a car, went to college and had enough control over her body...
...there is a bright side to postpolio syndrome, it is that the illness gives many patients an opportunity to come to terms with feelings they repressed for decades. For many, seeing those braces again stirs memories from the '50s, when they were pulled out of school, sent away for treatment and then brought home to face insensitive peers. "You remember that while everyone else was out playing football, you were watching and wishing you could be with them," says Lipshultz. Through support groups and counseling, many polio survivors are for the first time putting those unpleasant memories behind them. "Many...