does anyone know about polio

The short answer is no. You can't die from post-polio syndrome.

Complications from some types of poliomyelitis (like bulbar polio) can be life threatening however. Malnutrition, dehydration and pneumonia can be a problem for people who lost most of their nerves leading to the muscles involved in chewing and swallowing. I think the most serious complication associated with post-polio syndrome is acute respiratoru failure. This happens when a person develops weakness in the diaphragm and chest muscle, making it harder to take breaths and cough, eventually leading to an accumulation of fluids in the lungs.

I don't know what type of poliomyelitis your father had as a child, but if it affected his upper body, then I guess it's possible for him to develop these more serious complications. These are effective treatments for all of them however. There's only a very limited likelihood your father could die from these if he gets proper health care.

Your father's mention of death might be more of an indicator of his state of mind than a reflection of his health. If he's going through a period where he is losing abilities because of PPS, he might be having a hard time coping with it. There's a couple bad things that can happen during PPS, like loss of bladder control. That can be depressing and it can also be difficult to talk about it because of the "shame" that can be felt about it.

I think your father is correct in believing there are no treatments currently available to prevent the additional neurological losses occuring during PPS. I don't know of one. But there are treatments and options available (Like intermitent self-catheterization to deal with the loss of voluntary control over the bladder for exemple). It's just something that can be difficult to deal with initially.

I'm gonna end my post with a link to the medline page on PPS. You can find much more and up to date information about it there than what was found in my ramblings:

Polio and Post-Polio Syndrome
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/polioandpostpoliosyndrome.html#generaloverviews

Finally, one last thing:
Hugs are the best medecine.



I wish you luck, to you and your father.