Lives Well Lived, by Post Polio Victoria Inc. (Australia, 2023) presents themes of achievement, memory and ongoing motivation among people impacted by polio. The film touches on work, goals and everyday strategies for participation, reflecting both individual experiences and group perspectives. Warm and candid, it honours physical and medical disability while recognising the role of career and community in shaping meaningful lives. Included in the Focus on Ability programme, Lives Well Lived invites audiences to appreciate resilience and capability without reducing people to their diagnosis. It will resonate with anyone interested in employment, community participation and the value of shared memories.
Well, that was a good talk. You're welcome. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. I'm sure she did. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I was a six-year-old. I was a fast runner. I liked hurdling and so on. And suddenly, you can't run, you can't walk. And it's almost, seems overnight. For me, it meant at three that I was taken to the GP. And my mother was told she was neurotic and go away. There was nothing wrong with this little girl that couldn't sit and was screaming in agony and so on and so forth. My mother, from the story that I was told ran up the corridor and then all of a sudden I couldn't walk anymore. So they went into panic and they called a neighbour and they rushed me to the children's hospital where I was diagnosed with polio. As soon as my mother got to, I guess, what was the emergency department and said I think my daughter's got poliomyelitis, I was taken from her. And that's the last I'll remember of my mother for many, many months. And because it was a virus, there was a lot of fear. And so we were sent off to Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital to be kept out of the way. It is a form of spinal cord injury in the end, but it's not done by trauma but by this virus. And so depending where it attacks the spine, it depends on where you're weak. In my case, it was fairly low down so it was my legs that were affected. They were both paralysed. I was in a thing called a double Thomas splint, which basically meant that I was in an iron, piece of iron, that tied me down on all four limbs. Mum would wrap me all with the bandages at night and that's how I slept. It was a very traumatic experience. I still remember it because I was in at home in bed and two guys in white coats just came in and carried me out, screaming out into the night, into an ambulance and I woke up in a ward. I used to get into serious trouble about not doing my exercises because we as polio survivors probably the most significant thing about the difference between us and the average kid of the fifties is that we were pushed. I used to see Dame Jean McNamara who was the doctor in Victoria for polio survivors. She used to tell my mother that not to mollycoddle your daughter, not to wrap her up in cotton wool, she needs to get up and do things. She's actually a lazy child and she should be scrubbing the floors. At about sixteen I was reflecting on my life and realised that the health system was not perfect. I decided that I was going to become a nurse to fix it. So I had to take the calipers off, get the shoes back down to flat, finished my general nursing, became a midwife as well and then went on and became a critical care nurse when critical care was being invented almost. I studied law at Melbourne Uni and I did a combined law arts course. I majored in French so I went for the postgrad. That eventually resulted in getting a French government scholarship to do a doctorate in Paris. Disability is not the end of the world as long as you get the right help because you can still have a full life. Despite the disability it's given me the strength and the courage to get on with life. I readjust my life after every little episode, not every little, every episode of going backwards. I readjust how I need to live my life and I just move on. That's what I do and that's what gives me the strength to keep going. The love and the care that my parents instilled in me and my brother in me has given me that strength to do what I'm doing and what I want to do for the community. That's what powers me on. I don't see myself as different and most of the people that love me don't see me as different either. They just know that's just Robin. People assume that a disabled person has a lesser quality of life. In other words, they don't value life as much as another person would. I can assure you it's not the case at all. We all have the same hopes and dreams and fears. We're all people in the end and it doesn't matter whether one is disabled or not in that respect. We all have the same value. ♪ ♪
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by Post Polio Victoria Inc. - OPEN ENTRANT DOCUMENTARIES
