Post-polio syndrome

Steve Nixon woke up crying on his sixth birthday because he could not move and he didn't know why. It was July 1953 and he'd just become one of the millions stricken by poliomyelitis.

In the years to follow, he would endure the teasing of kids who called him "four legs" because he used crutches in early grade school, graduating to lifts in both shoes by fifth grade. He would give up his dream of sports as anything but a spectator. And he would meet a doctor, at 14, when he was doing much better, who would tell him to choose work where he would not have to be on his feet all the time.

That same doctor predicted that at some point in the future the effects of the polio would resurface hard.

The polio vaccine turned 50 this year, a medical milestone that stopped polio cold in the United States, though it's still devastating people on some continents, most notably India and Africa. The battle to wipe the virus from the face of the earth is falling a little behind where many health experts expected to be a half century after that first shot was fired — into the arm of someone desperate to avoid the debilitation of polio.

Although polio is no longer a threat in America, its legacy lingers. And just as that doctor predicted, many of the people who survived it decades ago are experiencing an aftereffect that is both frustrating and debilitating.

It's called post-polio syndrome and it is believed that as many as half of polio survivors will experience it anywhere from 10 to 40 years after they recovered from the polio virus, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

It is felt most often as a further weakening of the very muscles that were first affected by the polio infection. But there's more, an unpredictable mix of symptoms that may include fatigue, difficulty swallowing, slowly progressive muscle weakness and, sporadically, muscular atrophy. Joint pain and the development of skeletal deformities like scoliosis are common. In rare cases, the patient develops something that resembles but is not amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease).

The severity of PPS seems to depend on how hard the polio hit the individual originally. Those who had mild symptoms are likely to have mild PPS symptoms. Those hit hard by the virus, many of whom were left with severe and lifelong residual weakness, may also be hit hard by the post-polio punch.

That's the reality for Yvonne Failner, who contracted polio when she was 10. One minute she was out playing in the yard, the next she was so exhausted she put herself to bed in the middle of the day.