Polio, My Grandfather, and The Vaccine. How Science Can Save.

It sounded as though the crutches carried the weight of jumbo jet.  Each impact signaling the coming of this person of importance seemingly to everyone around me.

The first thing I remember about my grandfather is the sound of his crutches.  Not the most important thing about him, not even the rarest thing about him, but the first thing that I remember about meeting my grandfather was hearing him before I saw him. 

Being so young, the sound so foreign, and the fact that this trip up was specifically to see and meet this person seemed so grand, I didn't know what to think and was a bit apprehensive and intimidated of my grandfather at first.  

My grandfather had contracted polio, prior to the advancement of science and the vaccine, and the disease left him without the use of his legs, effectively paralyzing him from the age of 12.

The trips up to see my grandfather were treated as both miniature vacations, as well as opportunities to try and get to know my somewhat isolated grandfather who lived in a small area just outside of Ann Arbor called Whitmore Lake.   His name was James Smith. He was my mother's father and was one of my two living grandparents.  A link to a past that I could never fully know.  

I understood part of the reason we had to travel so far (PA ---> MI) to see him and not vice versa was due to his condition involving polio.  I had as rudimentary an understanding as one could have as a child, but it wasn't until I got out of the minivan and into the house where I could only hear the sound not of footsteps, but of crutches, that it made me acutely aware of how very different the world could be and how fortunate I was.

Polio had taken away the use of my grandfathers legs roughly around the age of 12, leaving him to adapt to a world that was certainly not built for people with his condition.  While there is no doubt my grandfather exceeded any and all expectations of any particular individual, the fact that he did so while essentially being paralyzed made his career all the more exceptional.

I had to adapt my habits around my grandfather specifically to his handicap.  Leaving out toy trucks and micro machine racecars could be a death sentence.

And while I could tell a million other stories, I really want to talk about what it meant to me to understand that science kept his fate from happening to me or anyone else.

When your grandfather had a disease that no longer exists, it helped shape my experience to wonder about things like genetics, biology and science as a whole.  It made me far more likely to trust the science when I can see and feel the resulting impact.

I would never have to worry about the reality my grandfather experienced.  The feelings and sensations of losing such an essential ability.  To understand that in someway, he would be treated differently than everyone else. That people would react to his condition differently than if he didn't have polio.  That abilities he used to have had been abruptly taken away through an invisible pathogen.

I didn't have to worry because the advancements in science and medicine had effectively eradicated the disease by the time I was born.  

It filled me with a sense of ease and maybe even pride that mankind had continued to advance towards a better world, one where science and evidence would become more and more trusted to help solve the problems of the world.

Of course science was still going to be limited to the constraints of time and ability, and while miraculous achievements occurred, some have not.  There is no cure for cancer.  There is no way to prevent autism or down syndrome.  We haven't even eliminated the common cold.

As this Covid-19 plague is occurring the world over, science seemingly has offered us a salvation in the form of a vaccine, and yet the thing preventing its implementation has been the erosion of trust.

This is bewildering to me, as we've reached a point of paranoia and skepticism towards science and government unlike anything I experienced while growing up.

It as though the last 100 years in medical advancement had all been for naught as people still cannot fathom the impact of a pandemic and disease.  They haven't experienced how science can save.

The hope is, that maybe, if people hear the story and experience of someone who has seen and the drastic difference between a world without vaccines, and ones with them, they might begin to trust once again.