Published: May 30, 2008 12:06 am            

Life in an iron lung was good

By Jeff Mullin, commentary — Life is hard, and getting harder.

Gas is approaching $4 per gallon, food prices are skyrocketing, home prices are plummeting and the economy is shaky, at best. Besides, we still are at war on two fronts, and the threat of terrorism continues to loom.

In a recent Reuters/Zogby poll, only 16 percent of Americans surveyed said the country is going in the right direction.

Of course, we have nothing to complain about.

Not, that is, when we compare ourselves to Dianne Odell.

Odell died earlier this week at the age of 61, but her death didn’t make her remarkable, her life did.

For nearly 60 years, Dianne Odell lived in an iron lung.

The 750-pound, 7-foot-long metal tubes are rare these days, thank God. According to one expert, only about 30 people in the United States still rely on the devices to help them breathe, but few of those are confined to them full-time, as was Dianne Odell.

Dianne Odell was a victim of polio, a disease that reached epidemic proportions in the 20th century. At one time it was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases in the nation.

The younger members of our staff have no memory of a time when polio was something to fear. They all were born long after Dr. Jonas Salk developed his injected vaccine against the disease, and after Dr. Albert Sabin perfected his oral polio vaccine.

They have only read historic accounts of the fear polio engendered in America in the 1950s. Parents did their best to keep their children away from crowds and out of public swimming pools. Polio outbreaks caused the closing of movie theaters, camps, schools and drinking fountains.

Yet despite the precautions children still contracted the terrible, crippling disease. In 1952, 57,628 cases of polio were recorded in the U.S.

Dianne Odell contracted polio three years before Salk’s vaccine went into widespread use in 1955.

The disease left her unable to breathe on her own, so she was placed in an iron lung, a device that was at once a beacon of hope for those stricken with that particular form of polio, and a source of fear for those praying their children would not be affected.

The device forced air into her lungs, then forced it back out again. Her body was enclosed in the metal tube, with only her head exposed.

More portable devices were developed in the late 1950s that gave their users much more freedom of movement, but Odell’s polio caused a spinal deformity that kept her confined to her iron lung.

Dianne Odell had no choice but to accept her fate, as cruel as it was. But rather than bemoan her situation, she made the very best of it she could.

Rather than feel sorry for herself, Dianne Odell got a high school diploma, took college courses and wrote a children’s book.

In a 1994 interview, she said “I’ve had a very good life, filled with love and family and faith. You can make life good, or you can make it bad.”

A good life, confined to an iron tube. How many of us, who have so much to be thankful for, spend too much of our time bemoaning whatever is making us unhappy at the moment?

The amount of faith, and pure positive thinking, it took for Dianne Odell to describe her life as good is nearly unfathomable.

That good life came to an end Wednesday when a power failure shut off her iron lung and an emergency generator failed to kick in. Family members tried using an emergency hand pump attached to the iron lung, to no avail.

Dianne Odell’s iron prison confined her body for nearly 60 years, but not her spirit. Now she is truly free.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.