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The Mountain Climber

While you're looking at this beat-up leg brace, take a minute and imagine the feel of the leather and steel. Then in the quiet of the moment go back with me to August 1952. I was a two year old, very lively little girl enjoying another warm summer afternoon, waiting for my daddy to come home from work and I felt like I was catching a cold. The symptoms were about to change my body and my life forever. I had just become the latest victim of polio.

This insidious disease that had swept the country and although it had been around since 1910, the medical profession was still grasping for the best ways to cope with it and the Salk vaccine was still a few years away. All of a sudden my carefree childhood was transformed into dark hospital rooms full of white metal cribs, crying children, iron lungs and isolation from my family.

After all the physical therapy, massages, muscles stretching, swimming and whirlpools and then even more stretching, I was put in plaster casts From my under arms to my waist and from my knees to my toes and then taught to walk on heavy wooden crutches. Those hot, stiff, itching casts were remade over and over to keep up with my young growing body. The cast slowed me down but it made me more determined to keep up with my playmates. There's nothing I wouldn't try although I might have to do it in a different way but somehow, some way I would do it. True grit was now becoming part of my being, the stuff John Wayne was made of. When I was four years old I was fitted with my fist steel braces and a neat pair of Davy Crockett boots. When I started school my first challenge was learning to climb a mountain. Actually, it was the steps of the school bus, then later the steps to the second floor at school. I was beginning to learn that there would be a lot of mountain climbing in my life.

I soon graduated from wooden crutches to "Canadian crutches" made of aluminum that wrapped around my elbows which was followed by learning to ride a bicycle and then on to ice skating, gathering bumps, bruises and a few scars along the way.

The summer before Jr. High the cord running to my toe was shortened and my foot was fused which I later compared to the pain of childbirth and kidney stones at the same time. But it was worth it for now there was no heavy cast and I was wearing regular shoes. I was now dressed for speed and ready to go.

It seems like sweet sixteen came all of a sudden with the good and the bad "boy experiences" my first job at the supermarket and learning to drive which was really a hoot! Graduation came and went. Late one evening while cruising around town with my girl friend I met a guy just back from Viet Nam and it wasn't long before I realized that he accepted me completely for who I was, crutches, disabilities and all and our life’s journey had begun.

We became engaged and planned our wedding. I began working on my secret plan to walk with a new brace without my crutches. Our evening candlelight ceremony was highlighted by the look on Jerry's face when he saw me walking down the aisle on my Dad's arm, without my crutches.

Our first apartment was just big enough to turn around in but it's where we started to build our nest for our expected baby. Pamela Lee came into our lives and our world changed forever. Motherhood was a natural for me, disabilities and all. And we topped that a couple years later with our son, Shawn Michael.

Our lives were filled with all the ordinary and sometimes "over the top" events that most families around us were experiencing. Over the years post-polio syndrome was taking its toll. So many of my joints were just about worn out with very little cartilage left and the damaged nerves were waging a war of their own. Medicine, booze and more medicine was beginning to take control of my life and after a time I realized that it was my "self control" that got me this far and I wasn't about to abandon it now and I took back control of my life.

A living angel came into my life by the name of Sandy. We became business partners and soul sisters we shared a complete connection that will surely last till the end of time.

I finally and begrudgingly had to give into using a wheelchair and special shoes for my weakened ankles. A job change for Jerry had moved us to South Florida and into a one floor home with tile floors making it much easier for me to get around. The warm sun on my aching bones was just what I needed.

Peter King – of www.Ortholabs.com made me a new type of brace that has given me a whole new lease on life. It has reduced the size of my mountains to mere bumps along the journey. The old brace you see here was so much a part of my life and served me well. So now as you imagine touching its leather and steel again think about this little story I've left for you and maybe, just maybe, if you have mountains to climb in your life, you'll know their height is measured by your own will, grit and determination.
Then “measure your life by its nows and not by its years and then celebrate each sunrise as a birthday"

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