Deed :

Preeti Mishra-Raju, lives with her husband and two children, At the age of 3, she was accidentally given expired anti-polio booster doses which lead to PPRP (Post-Polio Residual Paralysis.) Preeti’s polio virus attacked her when she was a child. The medical explanation is it suspends nerves of few joints. It does not kill nerves as Medical science believes. It keeps the nerves in suspended state as long as the virus is active. In this period, the muscles that are controlled by these nerves try to contact the nerves. Without response from the nerve for long time, the muscles assume that the nerve is dead. So the muscles never try to contact the nerve again. After the virus activity stops in the body, the nerves remain in suspended state. Most often, polio survivors start to experience gradual new weakening in muscles that were previously affected by the polio infection. The most common symptoms include slowly progressive muscle weakness, fatigue (both generalized and muscular), and a gradual decrease in the size of muscles (muscle atrophy). Pain from joint degeneration and increasing skeletal deformities such as scoliosis (curvature of the spine) is common and may precede the weakness and muscle atrophy. In Preeti’s case, she faced all of the above symptoms for over three decades. Her right leg clearly depicts muscle weakness and atrophy (wasting or loss of muscle tissue), including shortening of her leg by 6.5 cm. In addition, she has varus deformity of the foot, including flexion-abduction contracture of the hip. After her last child birth, she has been living with constant spinal and lower back pain. It has become a part of her life with daily activities becoming more difficult. With lack of physical activities, weight gain was a common hurdle. She visited 4-5 orthopedic physicians on her scoliosis and hip pain. Some of them suggested surgery and diagnosed fibromyalgia. Last year, at the age of 38, after witnessing people changing their lives for a healthier living, she decided to start walking to lose weight. She also saw people running and as a child wanted to be normal with a desire to be an athlete. She started jogging for short distances, but the pain in her hip, spine, lower back, and shoulder were excruciating. This leads to constant depression. In August 2014, she met Coach Michael Francis, of The Pune Marathoners Club, where he saw her jogging with a large limp with an undulating shoulder and hip with ever step she took. He immediately advised her to get orthotic to raise her right leg. Difficulty with gait is caused by progressive weakness, pain, or muscle atrophy. His goal was to improve her gait by gradually decreasing the shortening of her leg. Coach Michael accompanied her to a German orthopedic company in Pune. They made at least 6-7 trips before her first set of insole were ready. The technician advised to increase the insole by 2 cm. Preeti tried the insole for two months for her hip, spine, and shoulder to adjust accordingly. During the same time she was jogging and walking on the advice of her running coach. In addition, she was advised to do Yoga twice a week. The new shoes helped bring the required skeletal and muscular changes in her posture. She started training with The Pune Marathoners Club with a jog and walk, 4 times a week, including Yoga twice a week to open up her stiffness This was a rebirth to Preeti. She finally became confident about her gait and was walking and jogging with minimal limp. Jogging with the club gave her major confidence boost and there was a big change in her overall personality. She is no longer depressed and lives an active lifestyle. Finally, she got the correct insole done with a 4.8 cm increase. She had a local cobbler infuse the German designed insole into her Nike shoes. It looked bulky, but the performance had tremendous elevation in her gait. Most importantly, for the first time in her life her hip and shoulder were aligned without a limp. With the advice of Coach Michael, she began to jog further distances. He also advised her few strengthening workout to alleviate muscle atrophy. Slowly she got the strength to jog 2 km. The strengthening exercises along with Yoga were helping her finally jog/run along with other club members. Her running journey has just started and has a long ways to go. Today, she can comfortably run 10 km with little over an hour and looking forward to many more years of running and participating other races.