Last modified: Sunday, April 10, 2005 2:20 AM EDT End of polio BY GLORIA LaBOUNTY / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF ATTLEBORO -- A lice Cote doesn't recall life without polio. `` I always wondered what it would be like to walk in the grass in bare feet, or wade through the ocean in water up to my shins,'' said Cote, a resident of Attleboro. But that was not meant to be. She was barely 2 years old on the night in 1935 when she tried to climb out of her crib as she usually did, but could not. Instead, she just laid there, paralyzed. Cote, who was Alice Morse back then, would spend the next eight years in a hospital in Lakeville without ever going home, being treated for what was then called infantile paralysis, but would soon be simplified to one dreaded word -- polio. She remembers going in and out of surgery seven times, and remembers learning how to walk again after each one. When she finally went home in June 1944, she wore leg braces and held herself up with crutches, the aids she would rely on for much of her life until she relinquished them years later for a wheelchair, and finally in the last two years for her bed, where she is now confined. But Saturday she was up and out, traveling by ambulance to the Harvard Medical School in Boston for a reunion and reception for some 300 survivors to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the use of the Salk polio vaccine that has nearly wiped out the disease. Sponsored by the medical school, Children's Hospital Boston, and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, the three-hour program included displays of photographs, news clips and artifacts, and talks by both survivors and by medical experts on the history of a disease caused by a virus, and one that caused hysteria because its cause initially was unknown. Older generations well recall the closing of beaches, pools and schools as parents and public officials feared how the virus was spread. Polio often manifested itself suddenly, invading the gastrointestinal tract, and then the spinal cord and brain, causing paralysis and sometimes breathing and swallowing problems that could cause death. The impact ranged from very mild to very severe, and patients could end up fully or nearly recovered, or paralyzed. Now many survivors are coping with the aftermath in what has been labeled Post-Polio Syndrome. Dr. Julie Silver, medical director of the polio center at Spaulding, literally wrote the book on these later-in-life problems and spelled them out at Saturday's symposium. The condition arrives many years after polio's initial onslaught as injured muscles and nerves age, and as the healthy ones that were used to compensate for those damaged by polio begin to break down. As a result, new weakness sets in, and along with it can come fatigue, pain, and breathing and swallowing difficulties. Based on the number of polio cases in the country, the syndrome is likely widespread. A 1987 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics showed there were more than 1.5 million survivors at the time, and experts say the number alive today is difficult to determine because of poor records and the lack of follow-up. Although the first major epidemic occurred in 1916, polio did not reach its peak until just before the Salk vaccine was introduced in 1955. The New England Journal of Medicine reported 3,950 cases in Massachusetts alone in the summer of 1955, and two-thirds of those involved paralysis. According to Silver's book, nearly 60,000 cases were reported nationwide in 1952, but by 1957 when the use of the vaccine was widespread, there were fewer than 6,000 cases, and the last reported major case in this country was in 1979. Yet by the late 1970s, reports of Post-Polio Syndrome began surfacing with problems resembling those at the initial stages of the disease. Cote was initially paralyzed from the neck down, but therapy brought back the upper body, leaving her disabled from the hip down and dependent on crutches through much of her adult life. Several years ago she had to turn to a wheel chair, then to a motorized one when her arms gave out, until finally she could no longer transfer herself in and out of the chair and became bed-ridden as her upper body muscles began to weaken. `` Now some days I can't even tear a piece of paper,'' she said. Dr. Bradley Raymond, a retired Wrentham physician who contracted polio at the age of 32, said he started having problems a few years ago. Now at age 82, he has a weak voice and a susceptibility to pneumonia, along with other ailments not related to polio. When survivors first began to develop these symptoms, doctors thought they had somehow been re-infected with the polio virus, Raymond said, but that proved not to be true. What is actually happening, he said, is that `` the muscles compensating for years tend to poop out.'' He was a doctor in the Air Force 50 years ago when he first came down with a splitting headache and was hospitalized. By the next day he told his wife he couldn't breathe, and he thought he was dying. He ended up in a polio center, and in an iron lung, a kind of massive respirator in use at the time. Next came therapy in a tub of water, then exercises on a floor mat so he could roll over, then crawl, and finally walk. He went without a brace or crutches, and went on to raise a family and run a busy medical practice, but had to set aside the sports he had loved to opt instead for activities like woodworking. But like Cote, he is not one for self-pity, and learned to cope with his limitations and go on to lead a full life. `` You're dealt a hand, and you have to play with what you've got,'' he said. Cote approached life the same way. After returning home from the hospital at age 11 with limited education, she enrolled in sixth grade with other kids her age, and went on to graduate from high school. She got married, had nine children, worked outside the home for years at places such as Balfour, North Attleboro Town Hall and Texas Instruments, and learned to drive her adapted car. Now bedridden, her days consist of a visit by a home health aide in the morning and the evening to help her bathe, dress and eat. In between, she keeps busy with needle work, television and a laptop computer, and she keeps going because of the help she gets from her children. She's also on oxygen, partly because of the polio, and she takes medication, including a mild tranquilizer so she doesn't get depressed. `` That would be easy, but I don't let it happen,'' Cote said. `` I don't count what I lost. I count what I have left, and work on that.'' Some survivors have been guided through life by the disease. Brian Fitzgerald of Children's Hospital in Boston, a nurse and licensed medical trainer, said his bout with polio at age 5 probably led him to spend 30 years in sports medicine. Surgery helped him initially, and another operation at age 10 enabled him to get rid of the leg brace and the crutches and allow him to play the sports he loved. It was also a love he incorporated into medicine when he became a trainer. But about 10 years ago, his foot started to freeze up, his arch collapsed, and chronic pain set in. Although he was never diagnosed with Post-Polio Syndrome, Fitzgerald knows that at age 54, he might be affected. It's the bittersweet reality of knowing that polio for the most part has been nearly eliminated in this country, but its aftermath remains. Yet Dr. Raymond of Wrentham said he can live with that. When he first contracted polio, he said, he never thought he would live to the age of 70. `` This is all bonus time as far as I'm concerned,'' he said. GLORIA LaBOUNTY can be reached at 508-236-0333 or at glabounty@thesunchronicle.com.