By Rhonda Bartle

She has recently lost a leg - yes, that's right - amputated just above the knee.  But she doesn't waste time crying over lost flesh and bones.  She'll tell you the infamous polio 'doggedness' is actually wilful stubbornness, and then she'll tell you she gave her leg to science so others might learn from it.

In some ways, it's the second time Shirley has lost that leg. The first was in 1948 when she was just 14 months old and learning to walk.  She was the 53rd child in two days to be diagnosed with poliomyelitis in South Taranaki. The youngest of four children, she was packed up from her home in Manaia and sent to hospital where she would spend much of her life until the age of fifteen.

Shirley did the hospital rounds from Hawera to Wanganui to Wellington, all the way to Rotorua, where she was turned away on the grounds that she wasn't 'bad enough' despite a long series of complications and operations.

'At the age of four I was only allowed home at weekends.  I was paralysed down my left side from the shoulder.  My parents had to carry me everywhere.  If I was on the floor I could crawl short distances.'

Like June Opie before her, Shirley's indomitable spirit gets her through - along with her abiding love of horses.  Her first memory of being on a horse is of her father holding her on a wide, warm back.  It was difficult to keep her balance because she couldn't grip with her legs.

'My dad had Clydesdales,' she says.  'I got to drive the horses on parades.  Just to sit there and drive through all these thousands and thousands of people, I felt like I didn't have a disability.  I felt proud.  And now I have this beautiful museum that's gorgeous.'

Shirley's house is full of horses - figurines, posters and painted on plates, even a hand-knitted, horse-patterned jersey.  Every room is decorated with horses and she's been collecting the 1500 horse ornaments for nearly 30 years.   She has a live miniature horse called Lucky.  'Yes. Of course it's Freudian,' she says. 'Horses got me around.' 

She says riding her dad's horses was perhaps the only joyful part of a life punctuated by pain and abuse from other kids. 'School was an ordeal.  I was called a crippled bitch. I was called Floppy because I was paralysed and my leg just used to swing all the time.'

The usual procedure of quarantine was shocking. 'It was horrific on our lives.  Even when you came out. 'Oh she's got polio, or he's got polio, we can't go near them, we might get it.'  Even after people got to know you, people would walk across the street which was embarrassing.'

People still shun those less than perfect. 'I still get it today.  I think it's how you're brought up.  I always feel it's what kids are taught by their parents. Where we lived later at Opunake, our neighbour had polio too.  That helped.  We went on the bus together, though we had trouble getting up and down the steps.'

Even today, people do not understand the long term effects of polio or how post-polio-syndrome can affect a survivor years down the track.  Shirley is still living with polio today.  A fall seven years ago led to a terrifying moment when she thought she was paralysed again. 

'I thought, Oh My God, my life's finished.  In hospital I found out I had polio again. Ended up in a wheelchair.  The wheelchair sat on my patio for a whole week because I refused to get in it.  I crawled around the floor until I thought, bugger this, I'm getting carpet burns. I'm going to have to give in.'

She says it's true that polio people are very strong willed.  She laughs, 'We are such determined people.  We've had to be.  The olden days, just because you had a disability, there was no excuse why you couldn't do things.'

She believes June Opie was an inspiration.  'What she did with her life was fantastic.  She showed people they could get motivated and get on with life.'

After leaving school, though she was on crutches, Shirley worked with her father's horses and milked the cows. 'The harder you work, the worse it affects you later.  Some people don't have post polio syndrome but I worked on the farm, I did everything on the farm.  The harder you work, a few years on, it catches up with you.'

She stabs a finger into her arm. 'As you can see by my arms, all my muscles are going, that's why they're so big and hard. I've got dysphasia - breathing problems. I've got sleep apnoea. I sleep at night with a machine to keep me alive. I can't do hardly any lifting any more.  It's affecting me big-time.

'Physios think we can just exercise to the max, which we can't, of course.  If we do five minutes a day we're absolutely pooped.  Our body can't handle the exercises.  There's a terrific price to pay afterwards in terms of pain.

'I practise mind over matter - I get a lot of pain and I go into a deep thought and think 'go and do something'.  That's the way I've lived my life.'

The mother of four children, the last five months of every pregnancy was spent in bed, followed by 95 hours of labour.  Shirley has no regrets.  'I loved having my kids,' she says.

The wish to help others is always uppermost in her mind.  As convenor of Taranaki Post-polio support group, she keeps in contact with at least 85 of the 350 Taranaki polio survivors.  There are an estimated 10,000 in New Zealand.  A new case in Auckland about 4 years ago should have bumped people out of their apathy but she doubts it did.

'I think people think we don't need to immunise children, which is just not on. That lady is paralysed from the neck down.  My phone rang hot with doctors who didn't know what to do.'

Like June Opie, she is not afraid to fight social intolerance and chop through bureaucratic red tape. 'I will battle till the day I die,' she says.  'I'm out there to help others with disabilities.  I'm there for them.  If they need anything, I'm there.'

She's fought for footpaths and ramps around Kaponga and is currently campaigning for a heated swimming pool.  'I belong to a Progessive Society to keep Kaponga up and running, uplift the town, paint it up, keep it going. I'm on the committee for the Disabled Person's assembly and have been for the last 8 years, helping people get out and motivate themselves.  I tell them what I do in life and they look at me sideways.'

Shirley Hazlewood, polio survivor: One leg, two wheels, a powerhouse that hides a large beating heart.  A symbol of what can be done, not of what can't.

'I've had a hard life but I've got on with it.  I've counted my blessings so many times.  Life is what you make it.  If you want to be happy, be happy.'