Exactly right. I personally have known two people with polio. Both were in wheel chairs, one could not communicate with anyone but his parents who had learned how to understand his distorted speech. Polio leaves broken bodies with intact minds...absolutely devastating and finally became preventable, and was virtually wiped out...I say virtually because one of the cases I know of was acquired well after the vaccine was distributed nationwide, but the affected person was NOT vaccinated.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, most polio doesn’t progress to the paralytic stage. Polio is basically an intestinal virus that developed the capability of infecting nerve tissues as well. It quite often doesn’t progress very far in that direction before the body overcomes it. But in a small minority of cases, tragedy of the kind you describe results.