No one expected someone who needed an iron lung to live this long.
In July 1952, a six-year-old Dallas, Texas, boy named Paul Alexander was infected with polio. Believing he had a better chance of recovering at home, the family doctor advised his parents not to take him to the hospital as there were just too many polio patients there. After five days, when he couldn’t hold a crayon, speak, swallow, or cough, his parents took him to Parkland Hospital. Though the staff there was well trained, with a dedicated polio ward, the hospital was overwhelmed, with sick people everywhere, and nowhere to treat them all. When a doctor finally saw him, Paul’s mother was told there was nothing that could be done and he was left on a gurney in a hallway, barely breathing. Another doctor decided to examine him, rushed him to the operating room, and performed an emergency tracheotomy to suction out the congestion in his lungs his paralyzed body couldn’t deal with.2
Three days later, Paul woke up. His body was encased in a machine that wheezed and sighed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t cough. He couldn’t see through the fogged windows of the steam tent – a vinyl hood that kept the air around his head moist and the mucus in his lungs loose. He thought he was dead.
When the tent was eventually removed, all he could see were the heads of other children, their bodies encased in metal canisters, nurses in starched white uniforms and caps floating between them. “As far as you can see, rows and rows of iron lungs. Full of children,” he recalled recently.3
In 2017, Jennings Brown, writing for Gizmodo, met three polio survivors still dependent on iron lungs. “They are among the last few, possibly the last three in the US.”4
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious disease that can cause paralysis of legs, arms, and respiratory muscles. “The polio virus is a silver bullet designed to kill specific parts of the brain,” Richard Bruno, a clinical psychophysiologist, and director of the International Centre for Polio Education said. “But parents today have no idea what polio was like, so it’s hard to convince somebody that lives are at risk if they don’t vaccinate.”
When (Martha) Lillard was a child, polio was every parent’s worst nightmare. The worst polio outbreak year in US history took place in 1952, a year before Lillard was infected. There were about 58,000 reported cases. Out of all the cases, 21,269 were paralyzed and 3,145 died. “They closed theaters, swimming pools, families would keep their kids away from other kids because of the fear of transmission,” Bruno said.
In May 2008, Dianne Odell died after a power failure due to storms shut off electricity to her residence near Jackson, Tennessee. Odell had lived almost 60 years inside her 750-pound iron lung. An emergency generator that was supposed to autostart didn’t and family members weren’t able to get it working. They tried operating the iron lung with a lever attached to the machine, but it wasn’t enough.5
- “The Last Few Polio Survivors – Last of the Iron Lungs | Gizmodo.” YouTube, November 20, 2017. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gplA6pq9cOs.
- McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “The Man in the Iron Lung.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, May 26, 2020. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/…polio-coronavirus
- ibid
- Brown, Jennings. “The Last of the Iron Lungs.” Gizmodo, November 20, 2017. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://gizmodo.com/the-last-of-the-iron-lungs….
- Baird, Woody. “Dead at 61 after Life in Iron Lung.” The Seattle Times, May 28, 2008. https://www.seattletimes.com…iron-lung/.
