Enforced rest at onset appears to be best
approach for Polio and ME
Excerpt from
MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS : A Baffling Syndrome
With a Tragic Aftermath. By A. Melvin Ramsay M.D., Hon Consultant Physician,
Infectious Diseases Dept, Royal Free Hospital. [Published 1986]
'The syndrome which is currently known as Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis in the UK and Epidemic Neuromyasthenia in the USA leaves a
chronic aftermath of debility in a large number of cases. The degree of physical
incapacity varies greatly, but the dominant clinical feature of profound fatigue
is directly related to the length of time the patient persists in physical
effort after its onset; put in another way, those patients who are given a
period of enforced rest from the onset have the best prognosis'.
Ed: Interestingly the above excerpt from Melvin Ramsay rings
bells with my own experiences.
- When I contracted paralytic Polio in 1956, I was sent to
Queen Mary's Hospital in Carshalton Beeches. I was 5 years old, and like all
young children I just wanted to run around. Their 'novel' method of treating
Polio patients, who came to them from all over the world, was to tether them
horizontally to their beds 24/7! The only respite was to be taken to the
bathrooms for alternate hot/cold showering. The latter was presumably to keep
the muscles from deteriorating. This enforced rest or lack of mobility lasted
for 9 months, all the time I was there. It obviously paid off in my case as I
was luckily left with minimal damage after the disease. Yet in the Hospital
before I was totally paralysed and my parents were told I would never be able
to walk again.
- In Aug 1990 I became unwell with ME. I was half way through
extensive renovations to my house and garden. The garden had been completely
stripped and I was about to lay a new lawn from seed. The soil had been
levelled and I had waited for the weed seedlings to appear which needed
pulling out before sowing the grass seed. I felt really awful, I couldn't bend
down, being so stiff and in severe pain. I'd coincidentally had just listened
to a 'doctor' on the radio talking about ME! This doctor was saying 'there was
nothing wrong with the muscles' it was a communication problem between the
brain and the muscles. Well he may have been correct in his theory, i.e. it
being a neurological disease, but he didn't understand the effect of ignoring
ones body and carrying on. Well I ended up sitting on a stool and painfully
ignoring my body. Needless to say I became very unwell, a relapse that lasted
many months with a lot of that time being bed-bound.
Most of us were encouraged to ignore our condition when we were
first ill. We didn't need much excuse to get on and ignore it. We hoped that by
ignoring it, it would go away. And like a 5-year-old child we didn't want to
stop. Who knows if we had have rested in the beginning, would we have been less
severely effected? Those in the know all believe we would haven