Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio

by Gary Presley

In 1959, seventeen-year-old Gary Presley was standing in line, wearing his favorite cowboy boots and waiting for his final inoculation of Salk vaccine. Seven days later, a bad headache caused him to skip basketball practice, tell his dad that he was too ill to feed the calves, and walk from barn to bed with shaky, dizzying steps. He never walked again. By the next day, burning with the fever of polio, he was fastened into the claustrophobic cocoon of the iron lung that would be his home for the next three months. Set among the hardscrabble world of the Missouri Ozarks, sizzling with sarcasm and acerbic wit, his memoir tells the story of his journey from the iron lung to life in a wheelchair.

Presley is no wheelchair hero, no inspiring figure preaching patience and gratitude. An army brat turned farm kid, newly arrived in a conservative rural community, he was immobilized before he could take the next step toward adulthood. Prevented, literally, from taking that next step, he became cranky and crabby, anxious and alienated, a rolling responsibility crippled not just by polio but by anger and depression, “a crip all over, starting with the brain.” Slowly, however, despite the limitations of navigating in a world before the Americans with Disabilities Act, he builds an independent life.

Now, almost fifty years later, having worn out wheelchair after wheelchair, survived post-polio syndrome, and married the woman of his dreams, Gary has redefined himself as Gimp, more ready to act out than to speak up, ironic, perceptive, still cranky and intolerant but more accepting, more able to find joy in his family and his newfound religion. Despite the fact that he detests pity, can spot condescension from miles away, and refuses to play the role of noble victim, he writes in a way that elicits sympathy and understanding and laughter. By giving his readers the unromantic truth about life in a wheelchair, he escapes stereotypes about people with disabilities and moves toward a place where every individual is irreplaceable.

Genres: Nonfiction

238 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

I love words. Why? I don't know. Reaction to laconic male influences perhaps. It matters not. It matters to me only that I won an essay contest sponsored during the centennial anniversary of The Joplin Globe newspaper, and the essay was placed in a time capsule to be opened sometime shortly before the beginning of the 22nd century. Cool beans, huh? And I began writing more, selling to Salon.com, Notre Dame Magazine, and dozens of other venues. Now I have a book in print: Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio. Hey, who else do you know who has used a wheelchair for 49 years?

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey, I wrote the thing, and so I'm not even going to hint you shouldn't read it. I'll give you two reasons you might want to do so ...

1] It'll answer all the nosy little questions that lurk in the back of your mind when you see someone in a wheelchair.

2] It's a gentle reminder that all of us are riding out this life together, and we're an interesting mix of every human characteristic spread out of a great gray sliding scale upon which "disability" is but one marking point.

Find it here, or on Amazon.

[sarah morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Presley took his last physical steps in 1959 when he was only seventeen. He contracted Polio from the Salk vaccine. It's ironic that he got it from the last in the series of immunizations meant to protect him from the very disease he contracted and it happened the very year that the Sabin vaccine, much safer than the Salk, was trial tested. Since then Presley has used a wheelchair to get around. In fact, he's gone through seven of them. Today he is a writer and mentor, an editor of the Internet Review of Books, and an activist in the disability community.

It's been a long journey.

His memoir Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio, published this year by University of Iowa Press, tells the story of his pilgrimage from innocent victim to angry and defiant adult, and ultimately to an accepting, if somewhat battered, philosopher. In his own words:

"...cynical and unfeeling, a burnt-out case, which I attemptedattemptto explain away by saying I survived then and I survive now by mating an ignorant combination off existentialism and stoicism, by becoming a peculiar bastardized oddity rolling about the world, forever dependent."

I found this book fascinating on many levels. I am Critical Care nurse by training and the book is an in depth look backward at the treatment of Polio. I am old enough to remember Stryker frames, used to rotate paralysis patients in the ICU, but the Iron Lung was obsolete long before my nursing career began. Presley's descriptions of "the can" and the treatment he received in hospital are riveting.

I know from personal experience that many events that happened in his hospital stay would not be tolerated today. Nursing has come a long way since the 1960s. Simple acts such as turning a patient on a regular schedule would be done regardless of how reluctant or combative the patient might be, and Presley, by his own admission, was no easy patient. Anger and helplessness make for combative and frustrated patient. Sudden and irrevocable paralysis, a sentence.

In the years I took care of new paraplegics and quads I always tried to engage them to talk about their frustrations. Perhaps it takes as long as it has taken Presley to get to the root of the issues, to open up and speak the truth about himself as well as the world of "Crips."

Not only does he give us a look at treatments that now seem antiquated, but he uses his memoir to underscore the importance of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. How it changed, not only his world, but the world of thousands upon thousands of disabled people in the United States. Presley uses the words Gimp and Crip to describe himself and his fellow travelers, but don't ever let him hear you use the expression "wheelchair bound." For him and others in the disability world wheelchairs liberate rather than imprison.

But fundamentally this memoir is a universal look into what disables us and what empowers us, regardless of whether we ride a wheelchair or not. As we travel the road with Presley we begin to see ourselves in his agony and frustration. We are all crippled to a degree by whatever limits our lives. What we do with that is how we ultimately live. Simply put, in Presley's words: "Of course, it is madness to regret what cannot be changed, and I now have learned to keep the madman locked away where he cannot hurt anyone."

This is the trap door where we store our anger and blame once we have the maturity to understand that we are responsible for how we choose to live our lives. By the end of the memoir we watch Gary Presley find work, love, parenthood, and a life without rancor. "The paralyzed man miraculously found the ability to turn the other cheek, "'to live each day fully and gracefully.'"

Some people might be afraid to pick this book up. Those same people might also be afraid to look hard into their own lives. Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio is a book that is educational on a political and social level as well as a personal one.

It is well worth a read.

[Ramsey Hootman · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know those books about someone who suffers some sort of traumatic injury and heroically perseveres against all odds to emerge triumphant, transformed, and wise?

This is not one of those books. This is more difficult, more real, more personal, and infinitely more human. Presley's prose is so sparse, precise, and beautiful that I would probably read a book about paint drying if it were written by him. He has an incredible ability not only to introspect and turn a magnifying glass upon himself, but to filter the mass of raw emotion and experience into something not just comprehensible, but visceral and real. His style and attitude remind me of Oliver Sacks, another favorite. (He also kind of looks like him, which is weird...)

This is a book about polio, which is really interesting, especially in the early chapters. I was born long after the vaccine and experienced polio only in a curious secondhand way - a few adults I knew who were affected, and one up close and personal look at an iron lung in a museum. Presley's account of actually being in an iron lung infused me with a terrible claustrophobia which I am sure is only the palest shadow of his own experience. As someone who is endlessly curious about medical history, I was also fascinated by the details of his treatment. I imagine if you go looking you can find many people who have written about similar experiences, but I would guess that there are few who have done so with such a precise blend of the human and technical.

This is also a book about a guy trying to find his place in the world. A guy forced by circumstances to examine his own life, motives, and knee-jerk emotions like the majority of us rarely do. In this sense, the intense self-examination, and the constant self-flagellation about time wasted and spent thinking wrongly - puts me in mind of some very fervent medieval monk. His intense introspection prompts the reader to think about the world in a new and deeper way. Several times in my reading, I stopped mid-page just to think about what his self-discovery meant in my own life. Other times, I just wanted to say, "Dude, give yourself a break!"

This is also a book about disability - how we think of it, what it means in both a practical and spiritual sense. This is sort of a pet issue of mine, so I found his insight both fascinating and affirming. Again, Presley reminds me a great deal of Oliver Sacks.

This is also a book about love. Love between parents and children, siblings, and spouses. Not Hollywood love, but real, messy, complicated, mysterious love that cannot be explained, only accepted.

In conclusion, if I haven't made myself clear: You should read this book.

[Gilion Dumas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not describe Gary Presley as confined to a wheelchair! Nothing raises the hackles on this feisty author faster than this unthinking comment, no matter how benignly intended. To Presley, each of his seven wheelchairs has meant independence and self reliance in a life otherwise dependant on others for mobility. His wheelchairs have been the opposite of confining; they are his ticket to freedom.

In 7 Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio, Presley describes his life after polio left him permanently paralyzed. He tells what it was to be a 17 year old boy who walked out of basketball practice with a headache only to wake up in an iron lung, never to walk again. This is not a book about polio victims, people who use wheelchairs, or the general experiences of disabled people before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. This is the story of one man who learned very slowly how to live a life he never considered would be his. It is the story of the “riding lessons” Presley learned by rolling through the decades in his seven wheelchairs. As he explains:

[A]fter I had ridden through three decades in a wheelchair, I began writing about life as a person with a disability. I didn’t write, really, to complain or to change things. I wrote because I found myself unsure of my place in the world, and I wanted to explore my boundaries.

This book is the culmination of that exploration so far. The first half of Presley’s memoir is generally chronologic, setting out his story from the ill-fated polio vaccine that left him a “crip,” through wasted years of depression, to the happenstance that resulted in his long-time insurance career. The second half gets off a strict chronological path, filling in the details of Presley’s life after his parents’ deaths through observations and discussions of various aspects of his life, including his marriage and religious development.

The first half of the book packs the most wallop, only because Presley makes so real the confusion and despair of sudden disability in a time when America was on the cusp between “warehousing” “invalids” and trying to integrate people with disabilities into mainstream life. He does not spend much time on his early, pre-polio childhood, merely explaining that his family settled on a small Missouri farm when his father retired from the military. Bucolic Missouri seemed particularly sleepy after a nomadic life spent moving from base to base. Little did Presley expect he would stay there, dependant on his parents’ care until they passed away. He recognized that caring for a disabled adult son was also not how his parents had planned to spend their golden years. Presley’s examination of how his own anger and self-pity blinded him to his parents’ emotional needs, and how he lives now with guilt thinking of those years, cuts to the bone.

Equally thought-provoking is Presley’s consideration of the psychological effects his disability has on himself and his loved ones. From today’s viewpoint, when counseling is much more common, accepted, and expected – especially as part of treatment for a traumatizing event – it is hard to even comprehend how Presley and his family dealt alone with the emotional and mental side of his condition.

At a time when Presley and his family needed guidance most, he was sent home after three months in an iron lung and six months of recuperation and physical therapy, having only visited a “mind doctor” two times, including once just to determine if he was intelligent enough to use his new equipment. He wished his doctors at the rehabilitation center had asked him, “What would you like to do with your life? How do you plan on earning a living?” Or, “Better said, I wish I had known the question needed to be asked.” Instead, he was left to come to grips with his situation on his own; professional guidance and an “outside perspective” were not available and went against his family’s nature. Reading of his decades-long struggle with self-pity, anger, guilt, and depression – all without the benefit of professional counseling or psychotherapeutic drugs – only offers a shadow of the frustration Presley must have lived with.

In the second half of the book, Presley tells how his years of struggle left him a “burnt out case,” self-nicknamed “Gimp.” He describes his love affair and marriage with Belinda, a woman 20 years his junior and mother of two sons. He discusses his conversion to Catholicism. But in general, this part of the book is more emotional and abstract, as Presley tries to pull different threads together.

It is apparent here that this book began as a collection of essays, as the narrative flow is a little crooked. There is less attempt at straight-forward biography and more rough and tumble expression of true feelings, some of which are as confusing and difficult for the reader to grapple with as for the writer. For instance, Presley makes it clear that he does not want to be defined by his wheelchair, but ignores the obvious irony that he only wrote, and we only read, this book because of his experience with polio and wheelchairs. Also, when Presley distains all pity because it “objectifies, dehumanizes, and degenerates,” yet recognizes that “it’s all so damned confusing, that murky line between compassion and pity, sympathy and condescension,” the reader is left to wonder just what one is supposed to feel when reading Presley’s story. Finally, Presley’s candid acknowledgement that he lives always with “[i]ncoherent, unjustified unearned rage; putrid rage, mostly buried, mostly festering into guilt” than runs inside him “like a stream of molten lava,” makes it absolutely clear that this is no warm and cuddly, feel-good memoir.

In the end, these difficult passages are the real appeal of his story, if not in the immediate reading then in the later pondering. Presley’s book is as ambiguous, frustrating, and inconsistent as real life, with all of life’s rough edges and raw patches. It is not a guide to understanding “the disabled” as a group; it is a glimpse of the world through one man’s eyes. It is intensely personal story, and all the more powerful for it.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book because I had polio, too. I can relate to the author's description of being in an iron lung, learning to adjust to not being able to do things that he used to do for himself, being a patient in a hospital, fighting depression, and many years later, adjusting to post-polio syndrome. While my situation is different from the author's, it is also so much the same. He really nailed it all with his descriptions!

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very difficult to read. I felt for the 17 year old boy who complained of a headache after playing basketball and woke up in an iron lung. I am old enough to be aware of iron lungs as we had a hospital in our town where many lived in them. My Aunt was a nurse there and I cried over the stories she told. I never knew or thought about what happened to them later. Gary's book gave me insight of the life of a cripple and how he lived his life in his 7 wheelchairs. I never thought about the victims of polio or how much affect it had on their lives. A very good friend had had a milder case which left her with an unusual limp. Therefore, I stopped often to think about what Gary was saying about the profound effects it had on him and how he lived with it. I am a retired RN and was interested in the medical aspects of his story.

[Yasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book after hearing Presley’s piece written for Modern Love. His story of getting polio after taking the vaccine during its initial release is fascinating. I learned a great deal about the disease, including that it is neurodegenerative, that it was originally treated with and iron lung machine, and that it can affect breathing and nerves, and that paralysis varies by the stricken individual.

Presley provided a picture of the effects of his disease on his sense of self, his parents’ sacrifice in caring for him, eventually getting a job, and finding love. The parts I found most compelling were the initial treatment after he first got polio and then the love story.

I gave this book 4 stars because there seemed to be too much detail in some areas of the book. I ended up scanning the last parts of several chapters.

[Kerrigan Presley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ive known about this book my whole life, but I never looked to see what everyone thought about it. Gary Presley died in December of 2017, the 23rd. He’s my dad. I love to know that he did change everyone’s life as much as he did mine.

[Karna Converse · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important personal narrative about polio and its after-effects.

Gary was a 17-year-old army brat-turned-farm boy when he was inoculated with the Salk vaccine in 1959. A week later, however, he was paralyzed and lying in an iron lung in a southern Missouri hospital. Seven Wheelchairs is a compelling look into a life lived in a wheelchair for more than five decades. In 30 linked essays, Gary recounts his claustrophobic fear of being inside the iron lung and the inadequacy of the rehabilitation services he received, his ardent dislike of pity, and his gradual acceptance of "a life journey on wheels." Whether describing his first power wheelchair (which he named Electric Chair) or ruminating on "the pot I pee in," Gary's prose toggles between blunt, sarcastic, witty, and perceptive and challenges readers to consider a time before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed and before discussions surrounding words like "handicapped," "disabled," "wheelchair-bound," "crippled," and "gimp" were welcome.

I met Gary in an online writing group where he shared some of essays that form the foundation of this book.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gary Presley's memoir has plenty of smart and penetrating things to say about disability, and plenty of stupid and ostentatious things to say as well. Formally, Seven Wheelchairs is just okay. It has its share of MFA-style literary spectacles, among them choppy, arty abstractions served up in the same treacly, tired way. But there's still a genuinely keen and poetic wit in Preley's voice. I only wish he'd spent a little longer honing that voice, and not given it to every single opportunity to light another literary firework.

The writing is better when Presley talks about himself than when he describes the outside world: he's smarter when he's describing his inner turmoil (however pretentious or ludicrous it can sometimes appear) -- the angst that follows physical disability, the ebb and tide of self-pity and hatred, all the putrid and muddled whimsies that fill his head -- than when he waxes rhapsodic about his oxygen tanks or spiffy wheelchairs or external bullshit like that. For some reason, the prose always descends into this feeling of yawn-worthy, Sunday-newspaper, Marley-&-Me editorializing whenever he gets into one of these magnanimous let-me-talk-about-the-outside-world-now moods. And that's especially true when the ending is a trite, preposterous cheer for Catholicism.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still oddly fascinated with polio, I searched for books written by people who have experienced it first-hand. I saw this book on the library catalog and inter-library loaned it. It was pretty good, but I found it to be slow at times.

This book is about a man who reflects upon his life and how everything changed for him and his loved ones when he gets polio at age 17. He shares with the reader the difficulties he faced as he learns to live again after becoming wheelchair bound just when he thought his life and independence was beginning.

I have to admit that I'm always a bit skeptical when it comes to memoirs, because, oftentimes, they're written by those who aren't regular writers. I become overly critical of parts that seem slow or repetitive, because, to my mind, the untrained author is simply filling space to meet some type of page requirement set by the publisher. Although Presley has indeed had articles included in numerous publications, I found myself becoming annoyed with that feeling of slow pace and repetition.

That said, there aren't many books written by those who were struck with polio, and since I'm still amazed that such a horrible disease existed such a relatively short time ago, I don't have much room to be picky. So, in that case, thanks to the author for sharing his story.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's never maudlin nor melodramatic. It is a book that can be read in pieces or as a whole and the writing itself stands strong alongside the best. A must read for anyone who knows someone living a life fraught with disabilities. A must read for anyone who has ever seen a person in a wheelchair and looked away.

He answers the questions I never thought to ask beginning with the memory of those last steps before polio took away his legs. He told of being confined in an iron lung, not with pity or melodrama, but through the eyes of a devastated, angry teen age boy who was confused and frightened. A boy who had gone from working on his lay up shots to a non-entity swallowed up by a machine. And we move forward with him. We see him making an independent living, but more than that we see him coming to terms with his physical limitations, learning the landscape, what it means to live with disabilities in plain sight, in mainstream culture. We see him moving beyond the anger to find something we all wish we could find -- his true niche where he belongs and can accept and be accepted for the man he is, not for the equipment he must use.

Not just a 'disease' memoir! But a beautifully written memoir of a life well lived 'boob high' to the world.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not help compare this book to Paul Guest's One More Theory about Happiness: A Memoir. Both authors ended up paralyzed before they were 20. Gary Presley due to a faulty polio vaccine in 1959 when he was 17 and Paul Guest due to a bicycle accident when he was 12 in the mid 1970's. They had very different experiences due to their ages and that fact that one was paralyzed prior to the Americans with Disability Act and one afterwards. These two different memoirs showed me the critical role that federal funding of PCA (personal care attendants) play in individual's independence.

Gary Presley's memoir is honest about the isolation, guilt and lack of courage he had (and still has) for many years after his accident. He has shown significant courage in writing this memoir. Although he does create a life for himself, this is not one of those books where the disabled hero brings out the reader's inspiration and admiration with some skepticism. Presley created a life more by accident. For me his courage is writing honestly about his life and his inspiration is how well he writes.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Presley got polio at age 17, after receiving a Salk booster vaccine. Since then, he has been confined to a wheelchair, seven different wheelchairs over the course of 50 years.

This book started out as a series of essays answering the questions people often have when they see someone in a wheelchair. He was able to weave these into a seamless narrative, providing vivid images of his treatment, recovery and life as a paraplegic. This book, more than anything else I’ve read, has helped me to imagine fully the struggles that paralyzed people are faced with. From the scenes of his breathing tube disconnecting while in the iron lung and no one on the hospital staff noticing, to the trials of simply going to the bathroom or breathing or his recognition of to the need to find love, happiness and acceptance, regardless of one’s physical capacities, I felt drawn into his life.

This is a raw and honest book that will appeal to those who seek realism and truth. I learned a lot from it.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling account with courageous insight and blunt assessements of living with a disability. My father lost an arm in WWII and my sister and I had polio but because we were younger, (nine months and four years of age) it certainly wasn't as difficult -- as a child, you don't know any better -- and being raised with empathy and understanding for those "worse off than you" shaped who I am today. My parents were young and while they made some mistakes, we were not allowed to feel like we couldn't do anything -- we just did things a little differently than others but the end was accomplished. I applaud Gary for his honesty and brutal account of his feelings and of those around him. The writing is beautiful; his love of words is evident in the pages of this beautiful little book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone who has not really familiar with disability literature, Presley's book provides some intereting insights. He's an admitted curmudgeon whose traveled the road from self-pity to self-acceptance. Along the way, he does overturn a number of perceptions about disability. Those in the field of disability studies won't be happy with Presley's Lone Ranger image, but he does come to many of the same conclusions as those who see disability as social construction.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult uncomfortable book to read, but one that everyone who has not faced a disability or devastating illness should read. Gary Presley is brutally honest about the emotional struggles he faced after contracting polio at the age of 17 years in 1959. These struggles including his thoughts of suicide and the effect of his illness on those around him are hard to accept. I applaud Presley's honesty and hope it will help others better accept people unlike themselves.

[R.S. Kellogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary is a wonderful essayist with an amazing facility for language. I found this book absorbing and cathartic; though I am not a wheelchair user I really connect with his story.

[Babette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot. And it's much better than Blindsided.