Polio baby who won the fight against adversity

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets a man who has overcome one of the most feared illnesses to hit mankind

These days it’s unheard of in the developed world, thanks to vaccination, but in the early and mid 20th century until a safe, effective vaccine was developed, polio was one of the most feared illnesses a person could contract.

Poliomyelitis, as it is properly known, is an infectious viral condition that affects a person’s nervous system. It leads to muscle weakness and paralysis of varying degrees, depending on the nerves that are affected. There is treatment, but there is no cure.

For Galway city resident Tony Munnelly, who is originally from Doohoma near Belmullet, his leg, shoulders and lungs were affected when he was struck by polio as a baby and while he points out that he has “never let it interfere” with his life, polio did present him with difficulties that his able-bodied contemporaries didn’t have to face. It still does.

Tony was born in 1951 and got polio when he was just a year old. His sister who was two also got it, he says as he talks about the illness – and how he is now being affected by a condition known as Post-Polio Syndrome, which can occur in older people who have lived with the disease all their lives.

As a child, Tony was sent to Dublin for treatment and spent almost 12 years there between Cappagh Orthopaedic Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital in Baldoyle – there was no treatment facility locally.

Because he was so young, he can’t remember all the details, but observes that he never really got to know his mother and father due to that childhood separation and never felt a ‘child-parent’ bond with them.

There’s a sadness about him as he relates this aspect of his story, but there isn’t a screed of self-pity. In fact, self-pity is not present at any point during our conversation.

“I’m not badly off,” he points out. And he adds that life was different then. His father worked in England for eight months of the year, as was common during the economic climate of the time. His mother stayed at home, rearing the family and looking after her parents-in-law. It was not possible for her to visit Tony in Dublin, although his father used to call on the way home to Mayo from England. But, effectively he was a stranger.

“To me the nuns [Good Shepherds who ran Baldoyle and Cappagh] were my mother and father.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.