Not Without a Trace
Dr Peter Brauer, a polio survivor and expert on treatment of Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS), illustrates his personal experiences in a moving and beautiful poem.
Dedicated to all polio survivors!
You were young?
An infant
perhaps,
or even an adult;
weak
and torn from life
with a limbless feeling.
Stretched out,
almost motionless
and helpless,
you were lying
in a hospital bed
without even a pillow,
isolated
from the outside world.
A period
of lonely days, weeks,
and frightening nights;
left with your own day-dreams
and nightmares;
an unconscious presence
with no vision of the
future outcome.
Despite the ups and downs
of rehabilitation efforts,
a different world
awaited you
on the day you left.
In this other world,
even after recovery,
an everlasting trace remained,
a stain,
with which you were forced
to live with and accept.
This stain;
a remnant influential trace;
became a life’s companion.
Inwardly and
invisible to the outside;
you had become
an idiosyncratic person
quite often miss-understood.
Constantly left
to self-decision making,
with countless setbacks;
you had to make
it on your own.
Normality
required more strength
that you just didn’t have any more.
Nobody else saw it that way,
other than yourself.
Sometimes,
on the verge of hopelessness,
thoughts of an end
to your misery
may have come to mind.
You have lived your life
on the threshold
of limits
to your reserves.
Now,
many years,
possibly decades later,
you face the consequences,
the big bill!
Sadly, you pay it
with the loss of life’s quality,
living with the discrepancy
between wanting to
and not being able to.
I bow in humility
to your life’s achievements,
as I too have walked
along this path.
Modified lyrical translation: German to English by Tom House