Martha Lillard, the last iron lung user, dies at 78 - Taipei Times

Martha Lillard had just turned five when she was diagnosed with polio and depended on an iron lung to live.

She died on June 26 in Oklahoma, the last US polio patient who used the machine, her sister said on Friday.

She was 78.

Photo: Cindy McVey via AP

"They told her she wasn't supposed to live past 20 years old," said Lillard's younger sister, Cindy McVey. "She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life."

McVey attributes her sister's death to the effects of long-haul COVID-19.

A death certificate lists causes as chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome, McVey said.

Lillard slept in the iron lung cylinder that encased her body as the air pressure in the chamber forced air in and out of her lungs. As a child, she went to grade school for two hours a day and was tutored the rest of the time. She attended Shawnee High School by using a phone system that allowed her to interact with her teachers and classmates through an intercom in her classrooms.

Her family went on road trips to Missouri thanks to a custom trailer and her father calling hotels to find out if they had doors wide enough to accommodate the machine Lillard slept in. Lillard was even able to drive for a time.

"To me, it was just normal," McVey said.

Polio was once one of the nation's most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease primarily affects children.

Vaccines became available starting in 1955 and in 1979, polio was declared eliminated in the US, meaning it was no longer routinely spread.

Later, the Internet would help Lillard stay informed and learn about all sorts of topics, including her disease, which paralyzed her from the neck down.

With therapy, she was able to regain partial use of her left arm and use of her legs, but she could only move her left arm side to side at her waist. Even though she could not reach up, she spent many years living alone and preparing her own meals.

The Internet also allowed Lillard to meet her future husband.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Lillard wanted to understand more about what happened. In a chat room, she met a man in Egypt and communicated with him online for more than 20 years, McVey said.

Lillard married Baha Salh in February after he was finally able to obtain a visa to travel to Oklahoma.

"They were really soul mates," McVey said. "He's extremely brokenhearted."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lillard got the virus twice. Before getting COVID-19, she had less than 25 percent lung capacity. The last five years of her life, she was not able to leave home, as it became harder to breathe.

For the past two years, she was in the iron lung nearly 24 hours a day, McVey said.

McVey described her sister as artistic and creative. She wrote poems and composed songs. She wrote her own obituary, which is now posted online by a funeral home.

Lillard later updated her obituary to say she "died of long-haul COVID-19," but McVey added the date of her death.

In recent years, McVey and Lillard were desperate to find someone who could fix the iron lung, one of several she had over her lifetime.

"But since she's the last one, we don't need that anymore," McVey said through tears.