Martha Ann Lillard was 5 years old when polio completely paralyzed her. It was on her own birthday, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1953: she woke up with neck pain and, four days later, she could no longer move her arms or legs. The machine that saved her was an iron lung, that metal capsule from the 1950s that breathes for you when your body no longer can.
What seemed like a temporary solution became her way of life for more than seven decades. Her grandfather modified the tank so she could open the hatch from the inside. She learned to walk again, but her right arm remained paralyzed forever. She tried every modern ventilator that came onto the market, and none managed to match the exact pressure her body needed.
After Paul Alexander, another historic polio survivor, died in 2024, Martha became the last person in the United States who still depended on an iron lung to live. Seventy years after that birthday that changed everything, she was still there, breathing thanks to a machine that no one else needs anymore.