Lucky One
Subtitle: Making It Past Polio and Despair
Edition: First
Publisher: Anterior Publishing
Published: January 20, 2006
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780977620500
Copyright date: 2006
Subjects: Memoir
First sentence: When the doctor arrived at our old farmhouse in central Minnesota at mid-afternoon on August 21, 1939, I was well into the second day of a flu-like illness.
Description: After contracting polio as an infant, Richard Maus spent years shuttling back and forth between a supportive home and a renowned children’s hospital.
He did not feel he belonged anywhere.

It could have ended tragically, but Maus got lucky. He made it past 16 leg operations, 938 days of hospitalization, undiagnosed childhood depression, and flunking out of two other colleges to earn two bachelor’s degrees and a Master’s at St. Cloud State College and realize a fulfilling life and career teaching math and physics.

In this touching memoir, Maus paints a simple, but compelling picture of some of the experiences that shaped him. Days spent roaming the family dairy farm with his dog Rex  -  and pain, tedium, wheelchair games, and friendships at Gillette State Hospital for Crippled Children. Contemplating suicide in junior high and planning to shoot a high school classmate  -  and combining wheat in Montana and earning
a private pilot’s license.

Lucky One will fascinate anyone who is interested in a view of life in a small-town Minnesota in the 1940’s and 50’s and the medical practices of that era, as well as anyone concerned about polio and other preventable medical and social conditions that cripple children and their lives today.