Martha Lillard was only 5 years old when polio changed the course of her life, leaving her reliant on an iron lung to breathe. Her sister said Lillard, believed to be the last polio patient in the United States still using the machine, died June 26 in Oklahoma.
She was 78.
Doctors once doubted she would reach adulthood. “They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” Lillard’s younger sister, Cindy McVey, told The Associated Press on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.”
McVey said she believes her sister’s death was connected to the lasting effects of long-haul COVID-19. According to McVey, Lillard’s death certificate lists chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as causes.
For decades, Lillard slept inside the large metal cylinder of the iron lung, which enclosed her body and used changes in air pressure to help move air in and out of her lungs.
Despite the limits imposed by her illness, Lillard built a life that reached well beyond the machine. As a child, she attended grade school for two hours a day and received tutoring for the rest of her lessons. Later, she was able to attend Shawnee High School through a phone system connected to classroom intercoms, allowing her to communicate with teachers and classmates from home.
Her family also found ways to travel. With the help of a custom trailer, they took road trips to Missouri, while her father called ahead to hotels to make sure their doors were wide enough for the machine she slept in. At one point, Lillard was even able to drive.
“To me, it was just normal,” McVey, 75, recalled.
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. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of US cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s.
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 couldn’t 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 soulmates,” McVey said. “He’s extremely brokenhearted.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, Lillard got COVID-19 twice. Before getting COVID-19, she had less than 25% lung capacity.
The last five years of her life, she wasn’t 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. She described being a Humane Society volunteer.
“She was an avid Beagle lover and assisted in animal rescue as a cross poster on Facebook,” Lillard wrote.
She 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.
