The Forgotten Thirty

I was shocked yesterday to read a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about a woman named Dianne who died recently after living fifty-eight years of her life in an iron lung. I had not actually realized, with today's modern medicine and ventilators, that any such people were still alive. It seems this woman had contracted polio when she was three years old, had gotten her education while being confined to her iron lung, and died when a power failure (plus a back-up generator failure) recently occurred. The newspaper reported that some thirty people were still using iron lungs.

Both my husband and I remember the days well in the 1950's when polio was the fear of every parent in America. The rumors were rampant about how polio might be contracted. Both of our mothers believed that not having us swim with a large number of other children was best. In addition, my mother believed in the value of at least a two-hour rest or nap each day as a preventative against tiredness. My mother-in-law also added some fear of eating bananas to her list of "no's" during this time. This fear was probably greater than the fear of the Russians and atomic annihilation. We all knew children who either died or, like Dianne, were confined to a wheelchair for life or an iron lung.

Evidently Dianne had published a children's book in her lifetime about a wishing star named Blinky. We can only hope that today Dianne is free from the physical confinement of her lifetime. We would like to think of her as a wishing star also.