Book Review: Polio Child

Book Review:

Polio Child By Carol Rankmore

Few of recent generations would remember the fear called polio that once gripped the world. One might have seen the odd, pinched circle of a polio vaccination scar on a relative, but equate it with other childhood vaccinations such as those against measles and mumps.

In reading Polio Child, Carol Rankmore’s memoir of living through and with the aftereffects of the disease, one may truly understand the debilitating effects polio would have had on someone, and to this day still does.

At age 4 Carol became one of the first patients at the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Winnipeg, where an operation was meant to repair the muscle causing her right foot to turn inwards. Every three months afterwards had a return trip to the hospital for check-ups, or lengthy stays for operations and recoveries, enduring strange procedures and separations from her family. While Carol lived polio-free from her teenage years to retirement, Post-Polio Syndrome now grips her.

Ms. Rankmore writes with a gentle, selfdeprecating tone that does not invite pity but rather empathy, leaving one with the desire to hold her tightly by the hand. Her memoir is peppered with chapters that provide factual overviews: of the disease and its history, the Shriners Hospital from its inception and later evolution, the success of Salk’s and Sabin’s vaccines, and of Post-Polio Syndrome.

However the recollections that filter through the check-ups and operations are highly detailed memories of growing up in the fifties in Manitoba. It is this child’s perspective, Available in Winnipeg at McNally along with her adult discussion of the Robinson Bookstore, in Brandon at Coles Bookstore. psychological effects of enduring polio and its treatments, and her candor about her own current and determined battle with Post-Polio Syndrome that make her story so compelling. Polio is a subject that might leave one cold, but Polio Child by Carol Rankmore is a memoir of exceptional warmth and fortitude. n