Woman in Iron Lung Dies During Power Outage

[Kacey]

Woman in Iron Lung Dies During Power Outage

A thunderstorm knocked out the power to her home Wednesday, shutting off the massive metal machine that had helped her breathe for nearly 60 years.

It was about 3 a.m. when the electricity went out at Odell's home in Jackson, a small Tennessee town about 90 miles northeast of Memphis. An emergency generator did not start, and Odell died as her father and brother-in-law took turns pumping the iron lung manually.

Dianne Odell, 61, was believed to be the nation's oldest survivor of polio to have spent almost all of her life inside an iron lung.

She had been confined within the 7-foot-long, 750-pound machine ever since she was paralyzed at the age of 3 by bulbospinal polio. That was in 1950, just a few years before a polio vaccine was discovered.
....
Doctors at the time told Odell's parents she did not have long to live, but she went on to graduate from high school, take college classes -- even write a book from within the sealed, airtight compartment.

I can't even imagine what this woman's life was like. It's too bad no one was able to find a breathing apparatus for her that was more mobile.

 

[Tez3]

I didn't know those things were still going! What an amazing lady she must have been and what a tragic way to die after everything she had fought against.
I remember as a very small child in the fifties having glandular fever and how my mother cried when she was told, there was a polio outbreak in London at the time and the doctor had done tests on me for it, the relief it wasn't was too much for her. It was a very real worry then, something I think, thankfully, younger people don't understand. There were many people left in iron lungs then as well as those who had those big calipers on their legs.

 

[Jai]

A very tragic end to be sure.

 

[arnisador]

I'm surprised they didn't have a more reliable backup system.

 

[Empty Hands]

It was a very real worry then, something I think, thankfully, younger people don't understand.

Indeed. It really makes me wish those anti-vaccine goofballs would meet some of these survivors or even just talk to older people about what life was like before the Salk-Sabin vaccine ushered in the modern age of disease prevention. I even had one ideologue try to convince me that the reduction in polio cases was due to improved cleanliness and hygiene! Before Salk-Sabin:50,000 cases a year. The year after Salk-Sabin: around 100. Remarkable hygiene!