Last U.S. Polio Survivor in an Iron Lung Dies After the Machine Began to Break Down and No One Could Repair It
- WGON
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
Martha Ann Lillard, the last U.S. polio patient who used an iron lung to survive, has died at age 78 after the machine, which dates back to the 1940s, began to break down — and no one could repair it.
The Shawnee, Okla., resident first experienced symptoms of the disease on her fifth birthday in 1953, she told KFOR 8 days before her death. "I woke up and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me," she said. "I couldn't lift my head off the pillow."
"After four days, I went unconscious. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move my arms or legs," she explains. Lillard had contracted polio — just two years before a vaccine would be introduced that would help eliminate cases of the devastating disease in the U.S.
At the time, an iron lung — a full-body ventilator — was the go-to treatment for polio patients. "They usually didn't like to put children in because [children] fought it, but I didn't," Lillard said. "I liked it. It felt good to breathe."
As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains, polio, which is caused by the extremely contagious poliovirus, is "a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system." It lives in the feces of an infected person, but can also be spread via eating or drinking food that's been contaminated. Although most people who contract polio do not exhibit symptoms — or if they do, they experience flu-like fevers, tiredness, nausea, headache, nasal congestion, and sore throat — the CDC says 1 in 200 to 1 in 2,000 people will develop paralysis. It was famously the case with U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who needed a wheelchair after he contracted the disease.
Lillard initially spent six months in the hospital, spending 23 hours a day in the iron lung while she re-taught her lungs to breathe. "When I got in it, I was tired. Always getting in there felt wonderful," she told the outlet. As time went on and she returned to her home, her sessions in the iron lung were reduced. Although her right arm remained paralyzed, she regained the ability to walk and her lungs grew stronger.
As a GoFundMe established for her memorial explains, "Despite living with only 25% lung capacity, scoliosis, and a paralyzed right arm, Martha Ann spent her life as normally as possible. She was incredibly creative, painting, writing poems, and composing music for the left hand piano."
Other polio survivors transitioned to more modern respirators, but Lillard said "I tried all of them" and none could give her "what I needed to breathe. So they just weren't effective."
At one point, she only used it when she slept, but eventually her health declined — largely after she developed post-polio syndrome, a disabling condition that causes fatigue and weakness. She contracted COVID-19 twice, and then developed long COVID, needing to rely on the iron lung around the clock. As her obituary says, it was eventually the long-haul COVID that was named as her cause of death.
Amid her health struggles, the iron lung began to break down. "Some of the parts are from … the 1940s, and they're hard to locate," her sister, Cindy McVey, said. "We have a spare motor, but we don't have anyone to put it back in if we needed it."
And as KFOR reports, Lillard struggled with access to healthcare, and last year, a tornado knocked out power to her iron lung. Her husband, Baha Seleh, gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until help arrived.
She died on June 26. And as the GoFundMe recalls, "Even as post-polio syndrome continued to affect her, she maintained a wonderful fighting attitude, making the most of what she had left and enjoying life as much as she could. Martha Ann also saved people and abandoned animals, especially dogs, all over the U.S., showing her compassion and resilience every day."
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