Janice Lee Cootey, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, May 1, 2011

Transcript (45 pages) of interview by Becky B. Lloyd with Janice Lee Cootey of Sandy, Utah on May 1, 2011

Cootey (b. 1945) was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. She contracted polio at age nine in Wilmington, Massachusetts. She describes getting sick and being taken to Boston Children's Hospital. She talks about the treatments she received there, which included penicillin injections, and relates her vague recollection of an iron lung. She talks about her physical condition upon discharge, which mostly affected her right side. Ms. Cootey received physical therapy from Boston Children's until age fifteen and talks about that experience. She wore a back brace during her early teen years to help reduce a curvature of the spine. She also discusses the effects of the disease on her and her family. She received a degree and worked as a radiology technologist until age thirty, when the effects of post-polio syndrome forced her out of the field. She discusses the challenges of post-polio syndrome. Interview is part of the Polio Oral History Project. Interviewer: Becky B. Lloyd