More than 70 years after the polio vaccine became available, the iron lung is officially a thing of the past. Martha Ann Lillard of Shawnee, Oklahoma, believed to be the last person in the US living in an iron lung, died in late June at age 78—eight days after speaking with local station KFOR about her struggle to keep the obsolete machine running. Lillard contracted polio on her fifth birthday in 1953, two years before the vaccine became widely available. Paralyzed and unable to breathe on her own, she was placed in the negative-pressure ventilator that would sustain her for more than seven decades.
- "I got it on my fifth birthday. I woke up, and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me," she told KFOR. "I couldn't lift my head off the pillow." Days later, "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move my arms or legs. I was paralyzed all over." She was one of around 35,000 Americans who got polio that year.
She spent six months in the hospital and initially needed the iron lung 23 hours a day. Over time, Lillard regained enough strength to walk and spent years using the iron lung mainly at night, rejecting modern respirators she said couldn't generate the pressure she needed.
- "It's not, 'Oh, I want to be in the iron lung.' That's not true," she said in 2021, per KOSU. "I would rather not need it at all. But sometimes when I get in there, I say, 'Thank you.' It feels wonderful to get into it. It's the thing that's been there that saved my life and I know that it's the only thing that's kept me here."
- She lived largely independently, often using a portable device, until the COVID-19 pandemic, after which post-polio complications and repeated infections left her confined to the device almost around the clock, even as parts and repair know-how became scarce.
- Lillard, who married twice, was known for her art and love of animals. "Despite living with only 25% lung capacity, scoliosis, and a paralyzed right arm, Martha Ann spent her life as normally as possible," a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs states. "She was incredibly creative, painting, writing poems, and composing music for the left hand piano."
- After her death, "Martha Lillard was removed from the vacuum, and for the first time in 73 years, she slept outside the iron lung; eternal rest," Ali Meyer writes as KFOR. "Her life was a testament to the cruelty of disease and the power of medicine."
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