My little brother had polio, but it wasn’t serious, maybe it was lessened because of the vaccine, but I don’t remember the timeline.
My husband's uncle had it. Crippled him.
Still has it.
It turns out that polio isn't a one-time thing - for many, it is a lifetime of illness. Called "post polio syndrome", I think. A lifetime of pain and yet more crippling.
When my mother was a young child, sometime during 1917-1919, when there were 11 children in the family and no money to see a doctor, my mom and her brother contracted polio. My old world remedy grandparents would heat bricks in the oven and then wrap each of the bricks up in flannel and pack them on top and along side the legs of my mom and her brother, as they lay in bed. It did work well for my mom, though her brother was bed ridden for a year. My dear Slovak grandmother was known in the neighborhood as the lady with the healing hands. Stories my mother told me...