The Last of the Iron Lungs

[ehrnst]

Lillard sleeps in the iron lung, so it is in her bedroom. Even though the tank is a dull canary yellow it pops in the room, which is painted chartreuse—like the rest of the house, inside and out—and filled with toys and dolls that she has collected throughout her lifetime. On the walls hang a crucifix, a plush Pink Panther, and mirrors strategically placed so she can see around the room and into the hallway.
...............................................................................


She was infected with polio at her 5th birthday party at the Joyland Amusement Park on June 8th, 1953. Nine days later, her neck ached so bad she couldn’t raise her head off the pillow. Her parents said it was probably just a summer cold, but Lillard could tell they were afraid. They took her in for a spinal tap, which confirmed it was polio.
..................................................................................................

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.”
..............................................................................................................

These days her biggest concern is the canvas spiral collar that creates the seal around her neck. She used to have to replace them every few months after they wore out and stopped keeping a seal. Back then she could get them for a few dollars each, but she recently bought two from Respironics for a little more than $200 each. She said the company wouldn’t sell her any more because they only have ten left. For years she’s been trying to find someone to make a new collar. She uses Scotch guard on her current supply and tries not to move her neck around, hoping to make them last as long as possible.

https://gizmodo.com/the-last-of-the-iron-lungs-1819079169

[DURHAM D]

1. Interesting ...

last summer I was talking with my sister about our childhood friend who had polio and spent a year and a half in an iron lung. We went over after school every day and read to her. My nephew was sort of listening to us and asked us "What is an iron lung". We explained it to him as best we could. I just forwarded this article to him.

[Vinca]

2. I was thinking about the polio epidemic the other day when a flu vaccine discussion was going on.

That was such a scary, horrible time. I had no idea anyone was still existing in an iron lung. Thank heavens for Doctors Salk and Sabin.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. My father had a mild case of polio back in the very early 1920s.

He was treated with the Sister Kenny method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kenny and suffered no long-lasting effects. A terrible disease.

[struggle4progress]

4. I remember long lines of kids waiting to take the Sabin vaccine on a sugar cube

[american_ideals]

5. Wow. Such a powerful story.

[3catwoman3]

6. My 95 year old mother still remembers the terror she felt in the summers...

...of the early 1950s before the vaccine became available, and how thrilled and grateful she was when we could get it. I remember lining up for the sugar cubes in kindergarten. I was born in 1951.

I did not know there were any iron lungs still in use.

[dembotoz]

7. Born in 53 remember the sugar cubes at school. It was a bfd... didn't know why at the time

I remember lots of nurses..men in white coats

I don't remember conscious thought about iron lungs but I remember getting nightmares about them.
In the nightmare mine was gonna be red...or maybe maroon...
Pretty much only nightmare I remember.
Don't know if I had the nightmare often but I remember it.

[3catwoman3]

8. I remember watching some movie...

...a few years later, in which one of the characters was in an iron lung and the power went out. Another character was working past the pint of exhaustion/collapse to operate the machine by hand. I don't remember anything else about the film.

[sarge43]

14. I remember my mother's terror

When the vaccine (at first shots) became available, I think my feet hit the ground twice between home and the doctor's office. My bother was born in 1930 and me in 1943. Mom must have dreaded every summer for 20 plus years.

[Kingofalldems]

18. I got the shots, then the sugar cubes

then the sugar cubes again at Ft. Bragg.

[sarge43]

22. I got the cubes in grade school, 3rd or 4th grade

I don't recall any cubes at Lackland Plane Patch, but then my memory of basic is pretty much controlled chaos and a long time ago in a ....

[OnlinePoker]

9. So far this year there have only been 15 global cases of the wild virus

This compares to 33 for the same period last year. All of these have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Unfortunately, due to incomplete vaccination regimes (mostly due to the war in Syria) there have been 80 vaccine derived cases, up from only 3 last year.

http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/

[procon]

10. My grandfather, who was mustard gassed in WWI, was in an iron lung

at a VA hospital. I remember visiting him and seeing many men in his wing who were also in iron lung machines.

[Thor_MN]

11. I wonder if a dry suit manufacturer could make something compatible.

The neck seal on a dry suit would have a lot in common with the neck seal on an iron lung.

[Stryst]

23. I was just thinking about the duckweave collars

on MOPP gear.

[TygrBright]

12. I'd like every anti-vaxxer to read this in detail, with attention.

Even if it didn't change their mind about their own prejudices, it might help them understand why some of us go ballistic at the idea of reviving the old epidemics...

Anyone who lived through those times gets it. Not sure there's many anti-vaxxers in my age group.

Younger folks, though... THIS HAPPENED.

IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN.

YOU DO NOT WANT THAT.

sadly,
Bright

[ProudLib72]

13. My mother would tell me stories about kids in iron lungs

I had no idea any were still in use.

[Nitram]

15. In the Liberian village I lived in for two years there was a boy who had a leg damaged by polio.

Polio is still endemic in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

[bobbieinok]

16. Wondered what happened to the iron lungs

(b1940)

There were so many kids in iron lungs. In summer of 58, I worked the night shift as a nurses aide. There was a whole wing (floor? - memory shaky*) in the hospital for iron lung patients.

*Remember whole wing, but that hardly seems possible.

The fear was always there when I was a kid. A girl down the block got polio. I'm still initially shocked whenever I see kids playing outside in the summer heat. People thought that might lead to getting polio. And city swimming pools would be shut, and I think even movie theaters.

No one knew what caused it, so a single case could lead to city wide panic.

[George II]

17. Makes you stop and think the next time something in your life doesn't go just right.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

19. Makes me angry that she cant get replacement collars.

Iron lungs fascinated me since I was a kid. Really all diseases and syndromes interest me. If I wasn’t so allergic to math and chemistry, and hard work in general, I would have been a doctor!

[keithbvadu2]

20. "wouldnt sell her any more because they only have ten left"

"wouldn’t sell her any more because they only have ten left"

What are they going to do with them?

[canetoad]

27. I read a different story

A few days ago, about a man using an iron lung, so there are obviously several people still using them.

Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung
In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States, but by 2004 there were only 39.[29] By 2014, there were only 10 people left with an iron lung.

[FailureToCommunicate]

29. Apparently there are now only maybe three people still using that machine.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/polio-iron-lung-survivors-photos-lives-inside-ventilators-a8070881.html

[cannabis_flower]

21. I had a friend..

who had a girlfriend who slept in an iron lung. She didn't have polio. She had meningitis as a child and was in a coma for several years. She still couldn't walk. I saw it in her bedroom. This was about 16 years ago, so I don't know if she is still alive, but she would be about 45 now if she is. She lived in the Houston-Galveston area

[paleotn]

24. I'm old enough to remember

..people who were crippled by polio. Friends of my parents who I knew well. It killed my aunt when she was 5. Anti-vaxxers should have this shoved down their throats continuously, until the utterly, fucking stupid completely drips out of their brains.

[mopinko]

36. i have a couple of friends who are polio survivors.

in their late 60's. still have to fight to keep their limbs from stiffening up, and to keep the pain down. both have had surgeries to repair damage from the poor function of limbs.
brave souls.

[Submariner]

25. Polio is making a comeback...Post-polio syndrome (PPS)

As an 8 year old during the 1954 polio epidemic, I lost control of my legs. Partial paralysis from the hips down. After daily trips to the Children's Hospital the nurses and doctors contorted the hell out of my legs during painful leg/joint bending exercises, but without them I may have ended up in braces.

I've been doing a lot of tripping and falling the past few years, and my legs were fatiguing quickly during scuba diving and snorkeling, biking, and even walking. I had to give up scuba because I have lost the leg strength to fight a current or tide change.

The same leg muscle and nerves that were damaged during the 1954 episode, has returned beginning about 5 years ago. And there is no cure.

I feel fortunate though, because as the 8 year old I saw kids in rows of those iron lungs or wards full of kids in leg braces, and I feel I beat the grim reaper of polio and got off lightly.

http://www.post-polio.org/edu/pps.html

[LongTomH]

26. I had polio as a kid! I think I was treated with the Sister Kenney treatment and I never........

......had to use an iron lung. I had a friend in college who must have been one of the last cases; he had to spend his nights in an iron lung.

As far as I'm concerned, doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin are the men of the millennium, and I'd like to slap the living shit out of every stupid anti-vaxxer.

[onlyadream]

28. Does she spend every minute of the day in that?

Or is it just for sleeping at night?

[LeftInTX]

33. I wonder too

I would think a ventilator would be a better option if someone needs assistance 24/7.

[whopis01]

37. The article said only at night or whenever she was sick

During the day she uses a positive pressure ventilator

[trof]

30. A few years ago I learned that I had probably had polio.

It may have been diagnosed as either flu or scarlet fever.
Or just a bad cold.
I was born in 1941.

I have an atrophied calf muscle in my left leg.
My neurologist says it's "old trauma".
"Where did you grow up?"
"Birmingham (Alabama) in the 40s and 50s."
"So there was polio there."
"Oh sure. They'd close the public swimming pools when there was a polio outbreak."
"That's probably your problem."
Damn

[Sneederbunk]

31. Remember the terror before Salk and rush to

get us schoolchildren vaccinated. Saw an iron lung at a county fair. The stuff of nightmares.

[FuzzyRabbit]

32. We received our polio vaccines at school.

Starting with the Salk vaccine in 1955, we lined up by classroom and we all got the Salk vaccine. Our parents, who all had been so frightened about polio, were so relieved when the vaccine came out.

One of our neighbor kids had contracted polio. He recovered well enough to excel in sports in high school, and in the late 1960s enlisted in the Army. He was killed in Laos when his helicopter came under fire.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

34. The Catholic school I attended as a child was one of the ones

that tested the Salk vaccine. My older sister was in 3rd grade that year, and was part of the test group.
As it turned out, her group got the placebo, so she still had to get the regular shots when they came out.

I clearly remember mass vaccination clinics once the vaccine was approved.

For those of you too young to remember what an incredible thing the Salk vaccine was, go to a library and start reading any major newspaper for April 12, 1955. The overwhelming sense of relief and joy that the vaccine was effective is just astonishing.

[Iggo]

35. I don't understand how that works. Does she just sleep in it or does she live in it?

I've been afraid of those since I was little. (Born in the early sixties.)

There were older kids with leg braces. And we had this one young-ish teacher who walked with a huuugely pronounced limp and she had the two different shoes...one regular and one with a much thicker sole. The other teachers would tell us kids (whisper it, as I remember it) "She had polio."

I also remember one year when I ditched my shots at school. Catholic school, so it must've been 1st or 2nd grade. My mother, who was born in '39, went ballistic. It's still hard for me to understand what they went through back then. When and where I was growing up, polio wasn't talked about except to say it had been eradicated. That was always the word: Eradicated.