My Short Story with Polio

I was very humbled when my first short story on getting polio was published in the Harvardwood Anthology The Seven Deadly Sins as "Too Much,"

Harvardwood Press

It is a slightly fictionalized and literary account of the tragic circumstances under which I got polio as a child. It bears witness to things that are not often heard, and things that are not often said.

It may add further insights into blog entries such as:
Polio, Polio Misfortunes & Stories on Why some are skeptical of polio vaccine -  The Need for Vaccine Insurance Funds to regain Skeptics confidence. You can order the Anthology on Amazon.

Despite all my travails over the years, I have learned to see polio for me more as a blessing than as a curse.

Being struck with polio has helped make me a better human being: more hardworking, persevering, more empathetic, more attuned to the suffering of others, more willing to fight for just causes, no matter how unpopular or isolating. Along the journey, which carried me across four continents, I have met some incredible people, and have been inspired by some incredible polio survivors, none more towering than Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945),



For although my first episode with polio was as a six month old child, in 2011, just as I was getting to 39, just as FDR, I had  my leg paralyzed again, in an episode that was diagnosed as a rare instance of post polio syndrome. Throughout the ordeal, FDR was my guiding lantern, and thanks to what I learned about his journey, I found a new sense of purpose.


(This movie, "Warm Springs" which I am glad to have found in full online, almost moved me to tears & I hope you watch it & it will likewise moves you. If it is ever removed I hope you can otherwise order it. It is also available on YouTube & Amazon Prime video)

FDR is the man who led the United States through the great depression, and brought both Nazi Germany, and Militarist Japan to their knees.

At home he created the modern welfare state with the Social Security system, that guarantees a minimum living standards to the elderly and disabled.

And internationally, he designed the architecture of, and put in place the institutions guaranteeing the international order which is thriving to this day, with the United Nations, and the Bretton Woods organizations (World Bank, FMI), as the instruments through which global security and prosperity flourish, all from a wheelchair.

He is in our view the greatest American President of all times,, for he made the United States, the undisputed leading superpower on the world stage. All thanks to polio:

"[Roosevelt] only discovered who he really was through the ordeal of polio. ... It gave him a kind of confidence in his own strength that perhaps no one can have until you're tested."

 It also turns out that one of the most revered  Eight Immortals in Chinese mythology was a man named Tieguai Li, who appears to have been stricken with polio and is described as irascible and ill-tempered, but also benevolent to the poor, sick and the needy, whose suffering he alleviates with special medicine from his gourd.


So may this site, through these stories across time and place serve as source of inspiration to all those who have been affected by a debilitating condition that robbed them of their sense of who they were or ought to have been.