Summary Of Peg Kehret's Life With Polio

Life With Polio: Peg Kehret’s Story Poliomyelitis, otherwise known as polio, is a contagious viral illness that causes the gray matter of the spinal cord to become inflamed (Silverstein 15). Although the disease is not as common, people still deal with it today. Peg Kehret, a well-known author of children’s books, experienced polio first hand and lives to tell about it. Poliomyelitis is a disease that will not go unnoticed. When someone first gets the virus, they will experience symptoms such as a slight fever, headache, sore throat, and stomach pain. These symptoms generally start to appear seven to fourteen days after the person contracts the virus. As the disease progresses, more serious symptoms such as a high fever, stiff neck, fatigue, back pain, muscle weakness and spasms, sensitivity to touch, difficulty swallowing, irritability, constipation, and difficulties in urinating

While at school in 1949, the well-known children’s author suddenly fell due to the buckling of her knees. Soon after, she began to develop a sore throat, headaches, back pain, and a stiff neck. After a few nights, she began to feel weak and wobbly, had muscle spasms, developed a fever, and began to vomit (12). Shortly after, she lost function of some of her body parts. Peg’s mother called the doctor, Doctor Bevis, and he performed a series of tests to diagnose her. First, he tapped her knees in order to test reflexes. Her legs held limp and unresponsive when they should have kicked forward. Then he ran a fingernail across the bottom of her foot. She was unable to pull her foot away (14). Following the fingernail test, he performed a spinal tap (15). He then started to press on her ribs to test her breathing muscles, finding them to be extremely weak (20). Doctor Bevis diagnosed Peg with three different types of the disease: spinal polio, acute anterior polio, and respiratory polio