ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the process of recovery came to be conceived by the sick child and his family, and how their conceptions were modified in the course of their developing relationship with the hospital treatment system and its agents. It deals with recovery orientations during the period of hospitalization, and considers alterations in these orientations following the child's return home. The contingencies governing prognosis at this point are, in general, of the following order: Muscles that early and rapidly developing return of strength will probably make a full recovery. The key pathological fact in spinal poliomyelitis is the damage or destruction sustained by the large motor cells of the spinal cord as a result of the pathogenic action of the polio virus. A few other miscellaneous considerations also had a bearing on the emergence of recovery perspectives from the context of parent-child interaction. Certain aspects of the hospital regime also contributed to shifts in the parents' recovery perspective.
