num_pages: 387
description: America was still distracted, reeling with confusion and shock from the devastation of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II, but was on the brink of an industrial revolution, reconstruction and prosperity. During this transition, victims of a Polio epidemic numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and America struggled to deal with survivors, mostly children, of the paralyzing disease that "broke America's heart." Lucinda L. Blomstedt contracted Polio at the age of thirteen months in the mid-1940s and grew up struggling physically and psychologically. Her greatest challenge was to meet the expectations of a bewildered and beleaguered but progressive society that demanded not only her compliance to preconceived ideals of the disabled child, but unrealistic guidelines based on medical, political, and public opinion. When life seemed unfair and intolerable, Blomstedt wrote unique poetry, essays, and short stories. She also discovered a personal healing process that turns depression and psychological aches into victory. Meanwhile, the world continues to steep in controversies surrounding the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Have these and all vaccines, with the practices and blunders of science, brought about the conditions for global death? Have the controversies become smoke that keeps the real issues obscured?
language: English
title: The Bittersweet Pain of Polio Amidst Never Ending Controversies
titlecomplete: The Bittersweet Pain of Polio Amidst Never Ending Controversies
publisher: Llumina Pr