Last U.S. Polio Survivor in an Iron Lung Dies After the Machine Started to Break Down and They Couldn’t Find Anyone to Repair It

Martha Ann Lillard, the last U.S. polio patient who used an iron lung to survive, has died at age 78. The Shawnee, Okla., resident first experienced symptoms of the disease on her fifth birthday in 1953, she told KFOR 8 days before her death. “I woke up and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me,” she said. “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,” she explains. Lillard had contracted polio — just two years...