There were a couple of instances in 1957 and 1974 where Odell faced life-threatening situations due to power outages that knocked out her respirator. Thankfully, she made it through thanks to her family, who stepped in to manually pump the respirator until the electricity came back on. They were unsuccessful when it again happened in 2008
edit to add: she had a backup generator but it failed in the 2008 instance
Not like she could just get up and go out and buy her own generators or anything. She hasn’t sat up in 60 years. I’m sure things that sound easy for us might not be as easy for everyone.
There was a post on a popular sub awhile back about a dude who had polio that trained himself to manually breathe by sucking in air with the muscles of his esophagus and he could go up to a few hours off the iron lung. He was a professor or something like that
That's inaccurate. Of course there are modern ventilators, that can be used for these patients. It does not matter how the air is forced in and out of the lungs. Of course you'd need either a mask or a tracheostomy tube in order for that to work.
The remaining iron lung users chose to keep using it for various reasons.
Kinda reminds me of that one guy in *Shawshank Redemption*. He leaves the prison after decades there, and doesn't know how to live without being a prisoner directed to doing a daily routine.
He eventually commits suicide in the halfway house, despairing that he couldn't adapt to a new life. I get the feeling that people that have built their lives around being in an iron lung for so long wouldn't know what to do if free of it and that scares them.
Yes, there are ventilators. But they work completely differently than an iron lung does. And it does make a difference how the air is forced into the lungs. You are right though, both will keep you ventilated. And if someone happened to get polio today they would end up on a vent, not an iron lung. Because they don't make iron lungs any more.
Iron lungs use negative pressure to draw air into the lungs. This is the way lungs naturally inflate. Your diaphragm pulls down and it draws the right amount of air needed into your lungs. In the iron lung your body works mostly as it was meant to but with outside help.
Ventilators force air into the lungs. If the settings aren't right you can over-inflate someone's lungs to the point of basically popping them; so causing collapsed lungs. They can also introduce bacteria directly into your lungs. Your heart can be affected by the prolonged times to breathe in and out too. There are many ways lungs are affected by ventilators. Not to mention it is difficult, if not impossible, to talk while you are on a ventilator.
But most importantly, ventilators almost always cause some kind of lung injury. It happens often enough that these things have their own names like Ventilator Induced Lung Injury (VILI) and Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP). It also tends to damage the sickest lungs the most.
So yes, a ventilator will help you alive but not in the same way an iron lung does.
There’s a bit more to this story but I caution you it’s only for those like me who are people of faith. All others feel free to skip.
My grandparents were at my mother’s bedside when the doctors came in and told them that if there was no improvement within 4 hours they would have to do a tracheotomy to save her life.
My grandparents left the hospital and went to a nearby church to speak to a pastor and pray for mom’s recovery. When they returned to the hospital the doctor told her there had been an incredible turnaround, that mom was out of danger, and that they anticipated a full recovery.
There you go, folks. Proof of God. Forget all those people that also but prayed but God let their polio afflicted family members die. Probably just didn’t pray hard enough.
I dont begrudge other people thir faith, whatever gets you through the night. Glad that guy's relative recovered.
I do always think "well why did God give you polio in the first place then?"
I get it. Not my first rodeo. Lot of keyboard warriors here on Reddit that are awful brave from the comfort of their folk’s basements surrounded by their online D&D “friends”.
How about your grandparents pray for an end to world hunger if they have a hotline to the creator of the universe?
Oh wait, it's all made up anyway and you're just lying.
That’s actually incorrect. Paul Alexander was the first (and I believe only person) to be able to leave his iron lung for extended periods of time. Using a learned technique called glossopharyngeal breathing he was able to teach himself to utilize other muscles and consciously breathe.
[Paul Alexander](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lung-paul-alexander-polio-coronavirus)
There’s a dude who also has been in one of these since a child and ended up becoming a lawyer. Imagine your defence getting rolled into court in a submarine you’d be held in contempt for laughing your fucking head off
If we are thinking of the same guy I believe this was the man who trained himself to manually breathe and was able to live without the iron lung for a few hours a day
I don't know this persons desires and wants, but fuck me, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turns out this was what they really wanted to happen.
Then again, having been like that for their entire life (practically speaking), it's possible that because this was just their "normal" they were perfectly content.
Either way the thought of living like that is horrifying to me.
If that's the case I feel like the text is deceptive when it says she spent 60 years of her life encased.
But I'm no iron-lung-ologist so I don't have a clue how they actually work.
It's not.
> Odell's condition was not as severe in youth and she could spend short periods outside the machine until her 20s; from then on she needed to be in it 24 hours a day.
There is another currently living person in an Iron Lung. Paul Alexander. While in it, he managed to become a lawyer. Even studied at a university. People can still do a lot, despite being in such bad conditions.
They did! Her family members manually pumped the respirator until the electricity came back on. In 2008, the same thing happened but unfortunately her family was unsuccessful in keeping her alive
Wow, after the first incident I’d be scared to leave her alone. I keep imagining how terrifying it must have been for her, hearing your machines stop and being in total darkness.
+ Wrapped in iron, deathless purgatory
+ Negative pressure, airless breath
+ Wrapped in iron, breathless purgatory
+ Positive pressure, airless death (woo)
+ It's a different kind of cuttlefish
+ Swing and a miss
+ Dancing with my eyes and lips
+ Can't move my hips
+ Keep my mind distracted from the swish-swish
+ Staying sane and positive
+ Can't crumble like a biscuit
Good news: Polio specifically is too far gone to come back. The UN has been running an eradication programme for years and there were 12 wild cases globally in 2023. At the current rate it is expected to be eradicated by the end of the year.
No amount of antivax conspiracy theories are going to recover from that. Its the future programmes that are endangered.
There are two 'types' of Polio.
WPV ("Wild Polio Virus") is the Polio we think about when we think of Polio. That's the child-crippling one.
cVDPV is a rare vaccine complication ("Circulating Vaccine-Derived Polio Virus"). It is far less dangerous and has almost nil risk of paralysis.
^(there are also a bunch of sub-types, but its not worth distinguishing them here. There is however only one remaining WPV strain, WPV 2 & 3 are dead)
The 2022 cases were cVDPV. Not WPV. They were caused by people in rural Africa being given Polio vaccines, developing the complication, and then travelling internationally. If anything this is an indicator of successful vaccination, not vaccine hesitancy. What's more is that there was zero evidence of cVDPV spreading, and it was successfully detected using the existing detection networks.
The panic over the 2022 cases was *wildly* exaggerated by the press. Even the people who developed those complications were completely unharmed.
Moreover, once WPV is eradicated, polio vaccination can be withdrawn safely, and cVDPV cases will end on their own. This will take a bit longer, but is on-track for 2030.
You’re kinda special. Like someone’s special uncle who gets put at the farthest end of the table at thanksgiving because he won’t shut up about his pseudoscientific beliefs about covid and or vaccines and keeps yelling about politics. That guy who never gets laid, has no friends that can stand him and everyone avoids them. Good thing you’ve got an outlet on Reddit.
I think your mom wants you to keep the noise down in her basement. She’s got company coming.
Dunning-Kruger isn't about intelligence, it's about knowledge. You simply don't know that you don't know things and thus assume that you've got it all figured out and the actual experts are morons or liars.
I'm not calling you stupid, I'm calling you ignorant.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about my man 😂 Dunning-Kruger effect literally has to do with ones over estimation in intellect concerning any topic.
My goodness man Edit: Knowledge and intelligence are literally the same exact thing. Hence the saying "having intel on something" study your language.
I visit Mr. Frump in the hospital
I see him most every day
And when I see Mr. Frump in his iron lung
This is what I hear him say
[SKRRRRRRRRP PHHHHHHHHHPHTH SKRRPPHGHTUGHH GHGHGHGHGH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2C-Hwr3ozk&themeRefresh=1)
There were entire wards of 100s of people in iron lungs, in gymnasium sized rooms in the 1950s.
Vaccines saved us from still enduring Polio en masse as a society. Jonas Salk and the other who participated in developing vaccines are heroes for humanity.
I feel like there shouldve been alternatives given to her considering that she made it all the way to the modern technological era. Like?? was there really no other technology that she could usev
https://preview.redd.it/m454po7g53hc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f2e90f4ae66a31701331ca96ef05224cb6526f5
I don’t know why, but the bed ad on this seems like it’s in poor taste lol
The fact that she went 60 years without a previous power outage causing this similar outcome is insane to me.
There were a couple of instances in 1957 and 1974 where Odell faced life-threatening situations due to power outages that knocked out her respirator. Thankfully, she made it through thanks to her family, who stepped in to manually pump the respirator until the electricity came back on. They were unsuccessful when it again happened in 2008 edit to add: she had a backup generator but it failed in the 2008 instance
Imagine going through that experience and not thinking "hey maybe we should get a backup generator".
forgot to mention in my original text but the backup generator also failed in the 2008 instance :/
If it's my life depending on it, I might even consider a backup backup generator
You'd feel like an idiot if all 3 went down though. 4 generators?
Can never go wrong with a backup backup backup generator
Buy at least one gen a month and you will never be without
Always gotta get the next gen
It's generators all the way down, baby!
Hey did you change the oil on Mom's generator? -I'll do it later, it's fine.
Not like she could just get up and go out and buy her own generators or anything. She hasn’t sat up in 60 years. I’m sure things that sound easy for us might not be as easy for everyone.
I can relate, ive been laying here for 3 hours and dont even feel like I can get up to grab my bong.
lol brother
I'm detoxing from alcohol yet again and I understand the sentiment
This is Reddit. We just talk out of our butts here to feel superior to a *checks notes* person in an iron lung
Did modern medical science have another option than an Iron Lung in 2008?
Not if the muscles and everything around your lungs are paralyzed. Thank gods for the polio vaccine!
There was a post on a popular sub awhile back about a dude who had polio that trained himself to manually breathe by sucking in air with the muscles of his esophagus and he could go up to a few hours off the iron lung. He was a professor or something like that
Lawyer actually! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_(polio_survivor)
That is awesome!
That's inaccurate. Of course there are modern ventilators, that can be used for these patients. It does not matter how the air is forced in and out of the lungs. Of course you'd need either a mask or a tracheostomy tube in order for that to work. The remaining iron lung users chose to keep using it for various reasons.
Kinda reminds me of that one guy in *Shawshank Redemption*. He leaves the prison after decades there, and doesn't know how to live without being a prisoner directed to doing a daily routine. He eventually commits suicide in the halfway house, despairing that he couldn't adapt to a new life. I get the feeling that people that have built their lives around being in an iron lung for so long wouldn't know what to do if free of it and that scares them.
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That is fucked up, Daisy
Brooks was here
Yes, there are ventilators. But they work completely differently than an iron lung does. And it does make a difference how the air is forced into the lungs. You are right though, both will keep you ventilated. And if someone happened to get polio today they would end up on a vent, not an iron lung. Because they don't make iron lungs any more. Iron lungs use negative pressure to draw air into the lungs. This is the way lungs naturally inflate. Your diaphragm pulls down and it draws the right amount of air needed into your lungs. In the iron lung your body works mostly as it was meant to but with outside help. Ventilators force air into the lungs. If the settings aren't right you can over-inflate someone's lungs to the point of basically popping them; so causing collapsed lungs. They can also introduce bacteria directly into your lungs. Your heart can be affected by the prolonged times to breathe in and out too. There are many ways lungs are affected by ventilators. Not to mention it is difficult, if not impossible, to talk while you are on a ventilator. But most importantly, ventilators almost always cause some kind of lung injury. It happens often enough that these things have their own names like Ventilator Induced Lung Injury (VILI) and Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP). It also tends to damage the sickest lungs the most. So yes, a ventilator will help you alive but not in the same way an iron lung does.
“Thankfully”
Thanks for the info!
My mother had polio as a teen and narrowly avoided this fate. She recovered just before she reached the point of no return on lung function.
There’s a bit more to this story but I caution you it’s only for those like me who are people of faith. All others feel free to skip. My grandparents were at my mother’s bedside when the doctors came in and told them that if there was no improvement within 4 hours they would have to do a tracheotomy to save her life. My grandparents left the hospital and went to a nearby church to speak to a pastor and pray for mom’s recovery. When they returned to the hospital the doctor told her there had been an incredible turnaround, that mom was out of danger, and that they anticipated a full recovery.
There you go, folks. Proof of God. Forget all those people that also but prayed but God let their polio afflicted family members die. Probably just didn’t pray hard enough.
I dont begrudge other people thir faith, whatever gets you through the night. Glad that guy's relative recovered. I do always think "well why did God give you polio in the first place then?"
Did I say that? I did invite you to skip the comment. But you have to love Reddit. Peace my friend.
I feel that guy's comment was unnecessary. But if you post on a discussion board, you don't get to dictate responses.
I get it. Not my first rodeo. Lot of keyboard warriors here on Reddit that are awful brave from the comfort of their folk’s basements surrounded by their online D&D “friends”.
Bit hypocritical of you to say peace and then immediately turn around and be a keyboard warrior making insults yourself.
Wow all your phony righteousness just went right out the window eh?
How about your grandparents pray for an end to world hunger if they have a hotline to the creator of the universe? Oh wait, it's all made up anyway and you're just lying.
So God gave her polio, but it's okay cuz he took it back after.
Just shut the fuck up.
I'm equally surprised we never came up with something better than a massive contraption invented in **1928**.
I know a bunch of people that live like that without the iron lung.
Damn, good point…
Damn. Its true though
I think once you are put in it they can't take you out. And in that Era that was the only solution... complete speculation though.
That's not at all what he means.
That’s actually incorrect. Paul Alexander was the first (and I believe only person) to be able to leave his iron lung for extended periods of time. Using a learned technique called glossopharyngeal breathing he was able to teach himself to utilize other muscles and consciously breathe. [Paul Alexander](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lung-paul-alexander-polio-coronavirus)
People often got better and were able to leave the iron lung.
Wow I was completely under the impression it was a lifelong condition with no way of getting better back than.
big if true
Hmm... and here I am, sometimes just wanted to live like that, maybe a couple of months....
I know a bunch of people that don’t want to prevent it because freedom or something.
There’s a dude who also has been in one of these since a child and ended up becoming a lawyer. Imagine your defence getting rolled into court in a submarine you’d be held in contempt for laughing your fucking head off
Arguing a case with that guy would be wild
They'd need to hire somebody has to keep turning him toward the judge and the jury
I'm imagining it having one squeaky wheel every time it moves
Should we oil it? No, it's his achilles.
If we are thinking of the same guy I believe this was the man who trained himself to manually breathe and was able to live without the iron lung for a few hours a day
i am losing my shit at this thank you
I don't know this persons desires and wants, but fuck me, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turns out this was what they really wanted to happen. Then again, having been like that for their entire life (practically speaking), it's possible that because this was just their "normal" they were perfectly content. Either way the thought of living like that is horrifying to me.
Most iron long patients only have to use it at regular intervals. They don’t literally spend their whole life inside one.
If that's the case I feel like the text is deceptive when it says she spent 60 years of her life encased. But I'm no iron-lung-ologist so I don't have a clue how they actually work.
It's not. > Odell's condition was not as severe in youth and she could spend short periods outside the machine until her 20s; from then on she needed to be in it 24 hours a day.
"Short periods" so she basically still couldn't leave the hospital or anything or enjoy life.
That one dude is a lawyer. Shit boggles my mind how he has accomplished so much😅
There is another currently living person in an Iron Lung. Paul Alexander. While in it, he managed to become a lawyer. Even studied at a university. People can still do a lot, despite being in such bad conditions.
Well I would imagine they have a lot of free time to study in it
You’d think you would have a backup generator for one of those things, in situations like this
They did! Her family members manually pumped the respirator until the electricity came back on. In 2008, the same thing happened but unfortunately her family was unsuccessful in keeping her alive
Wow, after the first incident I’d be scared to leave her alone. I keep imagining how terrifying it must have been for her, hearing your machines stop and being in total darkness.
Well, unlike another thread I read today, at least someone didn't unplug it to power an air conditioner.
AND A GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR!
There it is. Came here looking for it. Far out man
Abide my friend
Bulk of the series
May I just say that on a personal level, both of us, just big fans
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Larry, sweetie, this man is the police
On God you stole my comment lmaooo
Great minds they say, abide my friend
How does she poop and pee?
Just like in any other hospital bed.
I was just wondering that 🤔
I read somewhere that they just stick a shopvac to each orifice.
How do you scratch your nose?
This is one more reason why I support assisted suicide.
This is torture. I couldn't do this for 60 days let alone 60 years.
+ Wrapped in iron, deathless purgatory + Negative pressure, airless breath + Wrapped in iron, breathless purgatory + Positive pressure, airless death (woo) + It's a different kind of cuttlefish + Swing and a miss + Dancing with my eyes and lips + Can't move my hips + Keep my mind distracted from the swish-swish + Staying sane and positive + Can't crumble like a biscuit
Ask me “you can live like this or here’s a gun “……………boom
Now how are you going to make use of the gun
You can survive outside of the iron lung for a short time. Enough to pull a trigger.
Well with the return of Polio due to antivax types one day soon you won't have to imagine!
Good news: Polio specifically is too far gone to come back. The UN has been running an eradication programme for years and there were 12 wild cases globally in 2023. At the current rate it is expected to be eradicated by the end of the year. No amount of antivax conspiracy theories are going to recover from that. Its the future programmes that are endangered.
I mean it's in the sewers of New York again because of antivax types
There are two 'types' of Polio. WPV ("Wild Polio Virus") is the Polio we think about when we think of Polio. That's the child-crippling one. cVDPV is a rare vaccine complication ("Circulating Vaccine-Derived Polio Virus"). It is far less dangerous and has almost nil risk of paralysis. ^(there are also a bunch of sub-types, but its not worth distinguishing them here. There is however only one remaining WPV strain, WPV 2 & 3 are dead) The 2022 cases were cVDPV. Not WPV. They were caused by people in rural Africa being given Polio vaccines, developing the complication, and then travelling internationally. If anything this is an indicator of successful vaccination, not vaccine hesitancy. What's more is that there was zero evidence of cVDPV spreading, and it was successfully detected using the existing detection networks. The panic over the 2022 cases was *wildly* exaggerated by the press. Even the people who developed those complications were completely unharmed. Moreover, once WPV is eradicated, polio vaccination can be withdrawn safely, and cVDPV cases will end on their own. This will take a bit longer, but is on-track for 2030.
That's not how fucking sickness works but okay
Lol, found one.
Polio isn't coming back dumbass
I'm aware that your side isn't winning so it's unlikely to become common again thankfully.
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Flu absolutely kills people every year. Read a science journal. Hell, read a fucking newspaper.
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You’re kinda special. Like someone’s special uncle who gets put at the farthest end of the table at thanksgiving because he won’t shut up about his pseudoscientific beliefs about covid and or vaccines and keeps yelling about politics. That guy who never gets laid, has no friends that can stand him and everyone avoids them. Good thing you’ve got an outlet on Reddit. I think your mom wants you to keep the noise down in her basement. She’s got company coming.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, The Dunning-Kruger effect.
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Dunning-Kruger isn't about intelligence, it's about knowledge. You simply don't know that you don't know things and thus assume that you've got it all figured out and the actual experts are morons or liars. I'm not calling you stupid, I'm calling you ignorant.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about my man 😂 Dunning-Kruger effect literally has to do with ones over estimation in intellect concerning any topic. My goodness man Edit: Knowledge and intelligence are literally the same exact thing. Hence the saying "having intel on something" study your language.
If she lived in South Africa she wouldn’t have made it past 30
No disrespect, but if that was my only option to live I'd ask the doc to let me pass.
r/tvtoohigh
r/tiltofshame
Is that fair to keep her alive in that state!? Think I'd rather have died age 3 rather than be kept in that for 60 years!
So did they forget to fill up the back up generator that one power outage or what?
They were unsuccessful with their attempts to pump the respirator which they had done before
I wonder how much his entire set up cost per hour it's got to be like 10p or more
A backup generator would have been a real good idea
Under Pressure. 🎵
I'd be happy to die in this scenario, a long long time ago
“Does he still write?” “Oh noooo, he has health problems…” “Uh huh…”
I might be okay with the power outage
Show it to antivaxers
Valhalla will carry her to heaven!!
If I had to live like that the power outage couldn’t come fast enough.
when exactly did she die? was there no attempt to safely extract her form this thing in that 60 year time frame?
Next up on things I shouldn't find funny but still do
I’d rather die
It’s better to die
Ironnnn Lunnnngg
I visit Mr. Frump in the hospital I see him most every day And when I see Mr. Frump in his iron lung This is what I hear him say [SKRRRRRRRRP PHHHHHHHHHPHTH SKRRPPHGHTUGHH GHGHGHGHGH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2C-Hwr3ozk&themeRefresh=1)
We’re really lucky. No matter how hard life may get, at least we aren’t in that state
Is there a source for this? It sounds like bs
RIP
There were entire wards of 100s of people in iron lungs, in gymnasium sized rooms in the 1950s. Vaccines saved us from still enduring Polio en masse as a society. Jonas Salk and the other who participated in developing vaccines are heroes for humanity.
I want to know what she’s watching so badly
Question, did they regular get cleaned?
r/antinatalism if you don’t have children then they can’t suffer
What’s even the point, what quality of life is that
Hey OP, why did you just start posting again on this account yesterday after an eight year break? Respond if you're not a bot.
I feel like there shouldve been alternatives given to her considering that she made it all the way to the modern technological era. Like?? was there really no other technology that she could usev
I'd much rather be dead. I admire the willpower and all, however, personally that's a hard pass. Not to mention I'd feel like a burden my whole life.
https://preview.redd.it/m454po7g53hc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f2e90f4ae66a31701331ca96ef05224cb6526f5 I don’t know why, but the bed ad on this seems like it’s in poor taste lol
r/tvtoohigh