Swimming Through

 

I remember being lowered into the huge blueness of the YMCA pool; the sharp smell of chlorine, voices echoing off the walls of the damp, cool room. A woman held out her arms to catch me as my legs disappeared into the liquid.

 

I’d never seen a pool. The only waters I knew were muddy creeks and a small man-made lake. Perhaps it was in that lake at the age of six that I caught the virus that made me ill, so that the doctor ordered an ambulance to whisk me to the hospital for a spinal tap.

 

I had polio in 1950, three years before the Salk vaccine ended the ravages of one of the world’s most contagious, destructive diseases.

 

For days I lay in bed behind doors marked “quarantine”, attended by face-masked doctors and nurses. I remember the smell of wet wool when the nurses wrapped steaming hot cloths around my legs. Sister Kenney, an Australian nurse, developed this treatment after seeing aborigines treating polio with moist heat. She also recommended intensive physical therapy after the infection was gone.

 

When I came home, I began countless hours of lifting my reluctant legs to rebuild leg muscles. At the YMCA, the therapist moved my legs in the friendly liquid. I loved those pool sessions because the water made the exercises less painful.

 

I took my first steps months later. One year after contracting polio, I walked and skipped back to school, back to my life before polio. I never looked back. I thought of polio as just a bad dream. All I wanted was to be like my friends.

 

But the comfort of those water sessions stayed with me. I loved splashing in the country creek near a friend’s house. At camp, I jumped eagerly into the pool. I swam and dove with enthusiasm, earning all my Girl Scout swimming badges and passing Junior Life Saving when I was 13. As a young mother, I took my daughters to swim at a spring-fed lake. I looked forward to slipping into the cold water for the first time each summer.

 

When I reached my 40s, the disease I’d forgotten I had crept back into my life. My leg muscles twitched after long workdays. Pain in my legs followed. I had bouts of fatigue. I saw an article about “post polio syndrome” (PPS). Was it possible this forgotten disease was back? Testing at a post-polio clinic showed muscle and nerve loss.

 

Over the 14 years since the doctor diagnosed PPS, I have had to adjust to a body that can do less and less.

 

There is one place where I find relief. When I slip into the pool at my exercise club, the water welcomes me, just as it did years ago. The pain disappears. I use my arms to pull through the water, fast enough to raise my heart rate. I swim the breast stroke and crawl and immerse myself in a place where I feel whole again.

 

The pool is my salvation. Swimming gives me a place where I rejuvenate, mentally and physically, then emerge to face whatever new challenges PPS throws my way. And after a swim, the hot, bubbling whirlpool eases aching nerves and muscles. As long as I can swim, I know I can keep moving through life’s journey.