An Unexpected Journey: A Physician's Life in the Shadow of Polio

Lauro Halstead, M.D. takes us on his unexpected life journey of challenges and growth in this memoir. As a young, vigorous college student in the early 1950's, he was suddenly paralyzed by a severe case of acute polio while traveling in Spain. He describes the struggle to leave behind the breathing machine that saved his life and develop the strength to pursue an adventurous life that included climbing Mount Fuji in Japan, living in Rome for a year and working in a tropical medicine hospital in India. Despite his polio disability, Dr. Halstead forged a pioneering career in medicine that included helping spinal cord injured men have biologic children and, when his own strength began to fail in mid-career, identifying a late phase of polio known as post-polio syndrome. In addition to his life as a successful physician, Lauro describes how he struggled to grow as a father of three children, to develop close, meaningful friendships with other men and to bond with his psychologically remote father. In a candid and emotionally revealing Afterword, Dr. Halstead answers common questions he is asked about sexuality, disability and adjusting to an inexorable decline as he journeys into old age.