Anaesthetist Overcame Polio To Work

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 2

Anaesthetist Overcame Polio To Work

Prospects looked grim for a young Englishwoman, the mother of a nine • month - old baby, when she was struck down with poliomyelitis in Kashmir in 1942. She spent nearly nine months in an iron lung and came out of it paralysed in one arm and both legs.

But since that time Mrs Joan Holland has had two more children and, in the early 19505, became anaesthetist for her husband, Dr R. W. B. Holland, an ophthalmic and plastic surgeon, at Quetta Hospital, Pakistan. How did she overcome severe disabilities to live a full, enjoyable life? “By prayer and perseverance,” Mrs Holland said in Christchurch yesterday. “You can only get the strength to persevere by faith and prayer —the prayers of others as well as your own.” By dogged determination she retrained herself little by little to live usefully—-

from changing a baby’s napkin to becoming her husband’s anaesthetist

Progress was very slow. Mrs Holland felt at first that she was not improving at all. “But as I looked back over the months, I realised how much more I was becoming able to do. It was a matter of finding out tricks in movements, by getting around and over difficulties. My husband was a tremendous, help to me,” she said. Living in Pakistan she bad no problems in getting help during the frustrating years of readjustment, when she could not even pick up a baby.

Mrs Holland was training as a nurse, with a view to becoming a missionary, when she met her husband. Dr Holland was on the staff of the same hospital in the South of England and had the same ideas of service in mind. They married in 1940 and set off for India. By about 1953 Mrs Holland’s children were growing up, and her own mobility was increasing. She took up the challenge of working as an

anaesthetist from her wheelchair at Quetta Hospital, despite physical limitations.

“It was a matter of necessity to help my husband,” she said.

She worked regularly, under her husband’s instructions, until recently. “I only give anaesthetics in an emergency now,” she said.

Eye diseases, such, as glaucoma, trachoma and cataracts account for half the surgery done at Quetta Hospital. They are also rife in the village areas.

“We feel that we shall now be able to find patients in the villaages who should go to hospital and treat others on the spot, to save them time and money in going to hospital before their cataracts are ready for surgery, for instance. When we get more staff we hope to establish clinics in the village areas,” she said. Dr and Mrs Holland travel extensively on medical and missionary work. They are now in Christchurch to attend the Church Missionary Society's annual spring school at St Margaret's College.