Michael's polio story

About the Author

Book Reviews of "The Red Brick Birdcage"

To Order

Introduction

Ever since I was a young man I have felt a persistent urge to tell my polio story. The subject of my polio or disability has never been addressed until now because I would never engage in such a conversation. Finally during the year 2001, I decided that it was time to tell my story. I went back in time to my childhood when I spent years growing up in hospitals, my youthful years in school and significant parts of my adult life right up to the present date, 2004. Travelling back in time to my hospital days was such an emotionally painful experience that I had to put the project aside for two years. Slowly my interest returned and this book is the result. Parts one and two are about a period of history when I, like many children in Canada and the United States, were hospitalized for elective surgery to correct deformed limbs. The second half of the book is about my adult experiences living with polio and post polio. There must be thousands of stories that should be told.
Remembering and reliving my time when hospitalized while writing this book has been both a cleansing and healing process. I try to remember the good times when we laughed and played, and not to focus too much on the physical pain that I endured. I can now recall my experiences in hospital with emotional detachment, feeling less pain for the child who was there.
Self-exploration was an important part of a counselling course that I was enrolled in. During my studies I learned that both the happy and the sad experiences while hospitalized were important to the development of my personality. By exploring my past I have been able to discover some of my behavioral patterns, why I react or behave in certain ways to certain situations. Why have I always pushed myself so hard? Since I was a young boy physiotherapists encouraged me to try hard, they would always say, "you can do one more." They were motivating patients to exercise hard to rebuild muscles that may have been inactive for months due to surgery. I put this motivational message into everything that I did. "I can do more." I would tell myself. Often I felt as if I had not done enough even when I was exhausted and had done more than what was asked or expected. Observing one’s past can expose many interesting behavioural traits.
Since being forced back into the world of the disabled, writing has given me a sense of purpose. This book has become an obsession for me to complete. I lie awake at night thinking of past events and how to get them down on paper in a chronological and meaningful way. After recovering from being sick and left disabled from the polio virus, like so many others I went on to compete and perform well in the world of the able-bodied, only to be forced back into the world of the physically disabled because of a malady called post polio syndrome. This story will give you some insight into the world of one polio survivor.

To Order Click Here

Want to know a bit about the author?
click here

Back Cover >>

This is the story of a child who unknowingly participated in a very important chapter of Canadian history. A painful chapter that taught Michael and hundreds of thousands of others like him in North America how it was indeed possible to survive and thrive after a potentially deadly disease left them disabled.

From the onset of polio until the age of thirteen he experienced many elective surgeries to correct a deformed limb. The surgeries enabled him to live with moderate disability up until the age of 35.

Thirty-three years following the initial onslaught of poliomyelitis, post polio syndrome has taken him back into the confines of disability while at the same time leading him onto a path of compelling and varied life experiences.