Polio victim says ‘foolish’ to pass up vaccinations
When the oral polio vaccination programme rolled out in Timaru in 1961, polio survivor Reita-Anne Peebles’ children were the first in the queue.
Now in her late 80s the paralytic poliomyelitis (polio) survivor still remembers the day when, as a 12-year-old, she began to feel ill.
World Polio Day was marked last week and it brought back memories for Peebles who says the condition, caused by poliovirus which destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord and possible paralysis, has had a lasting impact on her life.
In 1943 she became one of 179 New Zealand cases, 24 of whom died.
A pupil at Geraldine Intermediate School, Pebbles said she felt ill, went home and ‘‘collapsed’’. ‘‘I could not hold my weight.’’ Her father realised it was infantile paralysis and Peebles was six weeks in Timaru Hospital’s isolation Ward 3.
While she doesn’t remember being given medication for her condition she does remember the lumber punctures she underwent and a boy in a bed beside her who died from the disease.
Once discharged the pre-teen spent the next year at home and was forced to walk, with help, every day. Her school work went by the way and instead she concentrated on playing the piano.
Eventually back at school she had to repeat her Standard 5 class. With her left leg particularly weak, school bullies would wait until she was on a swing bridge on her way home from school and push it so the swaying caused her to topple over.
‘‘Down I’d go . . . I had a lot of falls.’’
Determined not to have iron calipers to support her leg, she swam regularly and only used a walking stick.
Her parents bathed her legs in hot water twice a day and rubbed them with ascetic acid followed by olive oil. They did not mollycoddle her, she said.
‘‘They taught me to just get on with it.’’
That mindset helped her cope with having four children. Her husband Tom was supportive and considerate, as were the children, she said.
Pain has been her constant companion and she has had two knees and two new hips from the effects of polio.
‘‘I walk, but walk different.’’ Peebles is not bitter about what happened to her but thinks people who choose not to vaccinate are ‘‘foolish’’ to ignore something that could prevent life-long suffering and potential death.
‘‘[My parents] taught me to just get on with it.’’