Polio Patients at New Jersey Conference Adapt to Their Changing Limitations.

Byline: Barbara Williams

Apr. 26--George Durr was about 6 years old when doctors told him he'd never live to see 40. He had been paralyzed from the neck down and spent the last four years in a hospital after contracting the polio virus.

He sometimes would remember those words and chuckle over the next 70 years as he climbed church steeples to repair them or while playing with any of his eight grandchildren.

"I'm still going strong," Durr said Sunday at the Post-Polio Conference held in Hasbrouck Heights. "I ruined my neck, shoulder, and arm muscles pulling myself up those steeples instead of using my legs, but you do what you have to do."

Durr, from Westchester County, N.Y., was one of about 125 people -- all polio survivors and their families -- who attended the conference to learn about the newest equipment and books available, and meet others living with the same limitations. Almost half the participants sat in wheelchairs or scooters, or had braces leaning against the round tables where they sat.

Although the disease was declared eradicated in the Western Hemisphere in 1991, during the 1980s, many polio survivors were experiencing fatigue, weakness, and muscle pain. These symptoms are believed to be the result of overuse of the nerve cells that had taken over for those destroyed by the disease. It was these symptoms that most people spoke about on Sunday.

"I was about 50 years old, and I just hit a brick wall," said Rona McNabola of Glen Rock. "I found instead of walking the entire mall, I could just enter it and ...