Martha Ann Lillard, one of the last polio survivors to live inside an iron lung, died at the age of 78 on June 26 after spending more than 70 years in the 1940s device. The machine had become too old to repair, with parts from the 1940s no longer available.
Diagnosis and early years
Lillard was diagnosed with polio on her fifth birthday in 1953. She told KFOR last month: 'I woke up, and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me. I couldn't lift my head off the pillow.' She fell unconscious four days later and was unable to breathe or move. 'They usually didn't like to put children in because they fought it, but I didn't,' she said.
Two years later, a vaccine was created, which eradicated polio. Iron lungs are airtight metal tanks that generate negative pressure to force the lungs to expand.
Life in the iron lung
At her sickest, Lillard required 23 hours a day in the lung, using her one hour of free time to rehabilitate her paralyzed limbs. She was able to live a relatively normal life, needing only about nine hours a day in the lung, until she contracted Covid-19 twice as well as shingles. She took high school classes over the phone and never attended prom as she spent her hour of free time in school.
In the months leading up to her death, she needed to be in the iron lung 24 hours a day. The machine began to slowly break down, and the pieces were too old to replace. At one point a tornado knocked out her power, and her husband Baha Seleh was forced to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until she received further aid.
Family and legacy
Her sister, Cindy McVey, said: 'Some of the parts are from the 1940s, and they're hard to locate. We have a spare motor, but we don't have anyone to put it back in if we needed it.' A GoFundMe fundraiser to honor Lillard's legacy after her death said: 'She was incredibly creative, painting, writing poems, and composing music for the left hand piano. 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.'
