Our guest in this episode is John Nanni, a polio survivor who is a member of the Polio Eradication Advocacy Task Force for the US Congress and the Rotary Club of Middletown-Odessa-Townsend.
John’s journey with polio began in 1953, just 6 months before Jonas Salk’s vaccine was widely tested. He was only 10 months old when he came down with polio and was paralyzed from the neck down for 6 months. John said his mother used physical therapy on his legs and did such a great job that he walked a year later. He considers himself lucky and feels blessed because he was too young to remember having polio.
When John turned 40, he started to experience renewed muscle weakness, joint pain, and extreme fatigue. Eventually, after seeing 10 different doctors in 2 years – many of them never seeing a polio survivor – he was diagnosed with Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS). By age 58, John was a wheelchair user restricting his steps to a couple of hundred a day to avoid overuse and further damage to his muscles.
John’s message is: "for every child we save from polio, we truly are saving them from a life of pain and suffering. Please continue the fight to End Polio."
