They were successful, active adults when it returned to challenge them again. But just as they did as children, Taylor and Soladay – both now Pinehurst residents – are fighting back, this time with information and resources that they want to share with people with the same affliction.
Taylor and Soladay have post-polio syndrome, a condition that can strike polio survivors anywhere from 10 to 40 years after their recovery from the initial attack. Together, and with the assistance of FirstHealth of the Carolinas, they are attempting to organize a Post-Polio Support Group that will meet for the first time at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 6, in Room B of the FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital Conference Center.
“The future direction of the support group will depend entirely upon the interests of the polio survivors, their spouses and caregivers, and any professional staff help we can identify,” Taylor said.
Taylor and Soladay said their vision of the local support group involves a small group of people who will develop personal relationships as they become comfortable with each other.
“Our purpose is to see if such a small group can contribute to the health and happiness of individuals as they cope with the varied problems associated with polio survivors,” Taylor said. “We believe our most likely contribution will be to supply information about the late effects of polio and what might be helpful in making individual situations better for all concerned.”
The causes of post-polio syndrome or PPS are not completely understood, but researchers believe that symptoms result — at least in part — from the unusual stress placed on nerve cells that survive the initial polio attack.
Polio damages or destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord that control muscles. Without impulses from those motor nerve cells, a muscle cannot function. Motor nerve cells that survive the initial polio attack sometimes send out new connections in an attempt to take over the function of the nerve cells that were destroyed. The process enables the polio survivor to regain at least some use of affected muscles.
But after many years, the overburdened nerve cells may begin to fail, too, resulting in new muscle weakness and what is now known as post-polio syndrome. Symptoms include fatigue, slowly progressive muscle weakness, muscle and joint pain, and muscle atrophy.
Aging may also play a role in PPS. Most people have a decrease in the number of motor nerve cells in their spinal cords after the age of 60, but those who have not had polio can usually lose a considerable number as they age without experiencing serious muscle weakness.
Not so for polio survivors for whom the age-related loss can contribute to new muscle weakness.
The severity of the condition depends on how seriously the survivor was affected by the first attack, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which estimates the incidence of PPS at about 25 percent of the survivor population.
There currently is no treatment that can cure or prevent PPS, but the condition is not usually life-threatening, except in people with severe respiratory impairment.
Although virtually eradicated in the United States since the development of the Salk vaccine in the 1950s and the oral Sabin vaccine in the early 1960s, polio remains a serious threat to residents of Third World countries. The last indigenous transmission of wild polio virus in the United States occurred in 1979, but a 1999 outbreak in Angola resulted in 500 cases and 50 deaths.
Both Taylor and Soladay contracted polio years before the development of an effective vaccine. Both also recovered, although Taylor was so young when the disease struck him that he was 2½ before he learned to walk.
He has some residual atrophy in his left leg, but no memory of his illness beyond what his family told him.
Soladay was paralyzed from the hips down and spent a year in bed. “I had just started kindergarten,” she recalled.
Neither received especially helpful treatment, because there was none.
“It was kind of like mumbo-jumbo healing,” Soladay said. “No one knew what to do.”
After teaching school for many years, Soladay had embarked on a second career with a Public Radio station in Baltimore when she began to notice that something was wrong with her.
“My walking just started going down,” she said.
As her condition worsened, she began to give up activities, like the golf she and her husband enjoyed so much, and to look for ways to simplify her life. Her comfortable home in Pinehurst Trace sits on one level and has no steps, and she recently acquired a motorized chair to help her get around the house.
She has adapted to the inconveniences. “Polio survivors try harder all their lives because they have been forced into it,” she said.
Taylor compensated for his childhood polio limitations by throwing himself into sports as a boy and young adult.
“Was I agile?” he said. “No, but I compensated by being a better pitcher than anybody else.”
Now an active almost 80-year-old, Taylor spent four years as a high school teacher and coach before entering the business world. He moved to Pinehurst 20 years ago, still working in his own marketing consultant business, and now channels much of his still-considerable energy into efforts on behalf of the support group.
He acknowledges that the fatigue associated with his condition sometimes makes that difficult, but, like Soladay, he, too, has learned to adjust.
“I had polio at 9 months of age, thus I have no memory of pain and suffering which others who contract polio later in life have experienced,” he said. “My family and I practiced denial as our strongest defense, and this is probably the most common characteristic of polio.”
Taylor believes this “denial factor” may keep some potential participants from becoming involved in the new support group. Both he and Soladay hope not.
“This is the reason we are approaching the idea of a support group as an exploratory venture,” he said. “If we can help each other, that will be fine. If we cannot, we will continue our personal quest for finding ways to cope with the new physical limitations of the after-effects of our polio experience.”
Anyone wanting more information about the Post-Polio Support Group at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital can contact Barbara Allred, patient education coordinator, at 215-5266.
Brenda Bouser works in corporate communications for FirstHealth of the Carolinas.
