Me too. Dad had polio when he was young. Fortunately for me he lived. Unfortunately for him life with multiple disabilities and eventually post polio syndrome was hell for him.
To the vaccine haters - not all vaccines prevent a disease in 100% of the cases as that is often not possible. All vaccinations do is activate your immune system if you get exposed and activates your immune system to fight it earlier than it otherwise would as it now has a way to recognize it and fight is in your immune system memory cells (eg T cells). Your immune system is responsible for fighting off the virus.
Some vaccinations do a better job than others.. Some just make it less likely you will get really sick if/when you do get sick, others do a really good job of preventing the disease in most people (polio, small pox, tetanus, measles, mumps, chicken pox...). Some vaccinations last "forever", others you need boosters and they may or many not start to loose their effectiveness prior to the "recommended" booster time (as the recommended re-vaccination is a statistical calculation based on what happens over time. Not all people fall into in the "statically average" category.
If you are worried about getting the disease from a vaccination then don't get vaccinated with a vaccine made with a diluted live virus. Those are the only ones where that is a risk although that is mostly only a risk for those who are immunocompromised. Those folks can only get vaccinations made with killed virus or virus parts as those have no chance of giving you the disease - side effects yes, but the disease no. So ask (or google) whether a particular vaccination made by a particular manufacturer is made with a killed or diluted live virus if this worries you.
