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An Oklahoma woman, who was the last American patient to rely on an iron lung to live after she was diagnosed with polio at 5 years old, has died.
Martha Lillard, who spent most of her life using the once-common breathing machine after contracting polio as a child, died June 26 at age 78 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, her sister Cindy McVey told The Associated Press.
“They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” McVey told the outlet on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.”
McVey said long COVID contributed to Lillard’s death, while her death certificate lists chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as the causes.
Lillard was just 5 years old when she came down with polio on her birthday in 1953 — two years before the first vaccine became available in the US.
“I woke up and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me,” Lillard told KFOR just days before her death. “I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.”
“After four days, I went unconscious. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my arms or legs.”
Lillard spent six months in the hospital, much of that time inside an iron lung, a full-body ventilator that uses changing air pressure to help patients breathe.
“They usually didn’t like to put children in because [children] fought it, but I didn’t,” she said. “I liked it. It felt good to breathe.”
Polio was once one of America’s most feared diseases, leaving thousands of children paralyzed during annual outbreaks before the vaccine became available in 1955. It was declared eliminated from routine spread in the US in 1979.
Lillard eventually regained the ability to walk, but her right arm remained paralyzed and she lived with less than 25% lung capacity, according to a GoFundMe for her memorial.
She used the iron lung while sleeping for years before post-polio syndrome and two bouts of COVID-19 left her dependent on it nearly around the clock during the final two years of her life.
Despite her condition, Lillard attended school, lived on her own for years, cooked for herself and even drove.
Her family took road trips with a custom trailer built to transport the massive iron lung.
Lillard also leaves behind her husband, Baha Salh, an Egyptian man whom she met on the internet and married in February.
Lillard met Baha Salh after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when she joined an online chat room to learn more about what had happened and stay up to date with current events.
They spent more than 20 years talking online before marrying in February after he was finally granted a visa to travel to Oklahoma.
“They were really soulmates,” McVey said. “He’s extremely brokenhearted.”
Lillard painted, wrote poetry and composed music for the left-hand piano. She also volunteered with the Humane Society and helped rescue abandoned dogs.
Last year, when a tornado knocked out power to her iron lung, her husband kept her alive by performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until help arrived, KFOR reported.
In recent years, Lillard and her family searched for someone who could repair the aging machine, whose parts dated back to the 1940s.
“But since she’s the last one, we don’t need that anymore,” McVey said.
With Post wires
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