Last American Polio Survivor Living in Iron Lung Dies at 78

Martha Ann Lillard, the last polio survivor in the United States who depended on an iron lung, died on June 26. She was 78.

Lillard invited a local news crew to her Shawnee, Oklahoma home three weeks before her death, because she needed help repairing the aging respirator, according to a report KFOR published on Wednesday, July 8.

Lillard contracted polio in 1953, two years before the vaccine became widely available in America — a year in which roughly 35,000 people in the country were infected and about half were left paralyzed, per the report.

She recalled the moment she fell ill: “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. I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.”

Symptoms worsened within days. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my arms or legs,” she said, according to the outlet. “I was paralyzed all over.”

The iron lung, a “coffin-like cabinet respirator” which helps keep patients breathing, per The Science Museum, kept her alive ever since. “They usually didn’t like to put children in because they fought it, but I didn’t. I liked it. It felt good to breathe,” she explained.

Following six months in the hospital, Lillard spent 23 hours a day in the iron lung, venturing out for only one hour each day to rehabilitate her paralyzed limbs, according to the report. She taught herself to walk again despite paralysis in her right arm. Her grandfather modified the machine so she could open it herself.

According to the article, she tried newer respirators over the years only to be disappointed. “I tried all of them. None of them could get up to 21 pounds (per square inch), which is what I needed to breathe. So they just weren’t effective,” she said.

Lillard lived largely independently until Covid-19 complicated her health, per the report. She battled Covid-19 twice, shingles and post-polio syndrome, and spent her final eight months in the iron lung full-time.