If I had to choose to name one book as the most inspiring book I've ever read, it just might be this one. Highly recommended (and yes, I also very much applaud that in the epilogue of Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, Peg Kehret makes a point describing post polio syndrome and that she, as well as many of her friends from when she was an in patient recovering from polio are currently struggling with this). For indeed, it usually tends to take me at least a day or two to read two hundred pages of anything, but with Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio I simply and also hungrily devoured Peg Kehret’s engaging, sometimes painful but generally hopeful and optimistic words in record time (and was actually even a trifle disappointed and frustrated when Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio ended, as indeed, I could have gladly read more, more, more).ĭescriptive, factual and also always showing Peg Kehret’s innermost thoughts and emotions (about her life, her family, her polio affliction, including detailed descriptions of the doctors, nurses and physiotherapists helping her to recover), I have definitely and absolutely found Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio immensely readable and author Peg Kehret’s twelve year old self (and first person narrator) very much personally relatable (someone whose words have entered my soul and whose battle against polio has also made me totally appreciative of the oral polio vaccinations of my own childhood and that fortunately polio is no longer the constant fearful spectre it was in the early to middle parts of the 20th century).
I am usually a rather slow and deliberate reader, so yes, I was pretty massively surprised that I managed to read Peg Kehret’s 205 page memoir about her struggles with polio (as a twelve year old, in 1949) in about two hours maximum. She brings it all to life so clearly that you long to know how it all turns out. As an aside about the book, one of the things I love the best are the pictures and the update at the end about the friends she made along the way. I'm thankful to have read Peg Kehret's account and get a little glimpse into what polio must have been like for my grandmother. I would love to learn more about my great grandfather and what he did exactly, but I guess I'll never know. I'm fascinated that my great grandfather found out about these treatments so early and used them (they were started in 1903 in Australia and didn't come to the U.S.
They involved heat and massage, so I am now assuming these were the Sister Kenny treatments that the author referred to. Her father was a doctor and had heard about some unorthodox treatments that were being done for polio victims and tried them on her. What a beautiful story! My grandmother was born in 1901 and had polio as a young teen (we think that's the right age).
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