Iron lung helped her survive; now polio is part of life

Merilyn Boyd’s iron lung opened like a suitcase. The nurses who kept her alive lifted a heavy hatch or reached through portholes to care for her.

Patients with polio survived inside machines the size of caskets that entombed paralyzed bodies for weeks, months or years.

Boyd will never forget the repetitive thump of the respirator that moved oxygen into her lungs. Her ordeal began in 1953. Then a 22-year-old mother of two toddlers, she and her husband were living in Panama, where he was stationed with the U.S. Air Force.

Thinking she had a nasty flu, Boyd became weaker and weaker for several days. The she could hardly breathe. She was diagnosed with polio. There was an iron lung at the base hospital and the tube became her cocoon.

She welcomed the enclosure. The tomb wasn’t terrifying, she said.

“I didn’t care at the time about going into the lung,” Boyd said. “I couldn’t breathe without it.”

Polio was widespread in the U.S. off and on from the 1920s through the 1950s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio and went on to create the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. (Today, some researchers believe Roosevelt might actually have had Guillain-Barré Syndrome.)

When Boyd got the dreaded illness, doctors advised her husband she was going to die.

After six weeks in Panama, the family was airlifted to Portland, Ore., where her parents lived. It was major news at the time because her trip was the longest mercy flight in memory.

Several emergency vehicles were waiting at the Oregon airport with the press and medical workers.

Boyd was in the lung for more than six months. There was a 12-year-old girl named Judy also in an iron lung on the polio ward. Boyd could see the child’s face, backwards, in the tilted mirror over her face.

Judy learned to do homework holding a pencil in her mouth. Boyd gave up trying to read as she lay in her tube. It was frustrating waiting for someone to turn the pages, she said.

Patients were spoon-fed food that had been pureed.

“I could swallow, carefully,” she said. “I could talk.”

Every day, she crept her fingers up towards her chest, millimeters at a time. It was a milestone when she dabbed on her own lipstick.

In the beginning, she was taken out of the iron lung a few times a day for 30-minute stretches. During her first full night in a bed, she feared losing her breath.

Nurses left the iron lung beside the bed.

Boyd made it through a whole night. With extensive physical therapy, she learned to sit up and crawl. Eventually she walked with the aid of braces and canes and drove a specially equipped car.

Her husband, who died in 1998, and daughters learned how to take care of her at their home.

Now 78 and living with post-polio syndrome, Boyd no longer walks or drives.

She lives with her daughter, Lynne Hollister, in Granite Falls. Hollister, and her other daughter, Karen Ahlstrom of Lynnwood, provide her care.

“Your muscles let you know they can’t do this much longer, or at all,” Boyd said. “It is happening with so many polio survivors.”

She attends an Everett Polio Support Group at 1 p.m. the second Saturday of each month at Providence Regional Medical Center at 916 Pacific Ave. in Everett. Group leader Rhonda Whitehead said there are about 3,788 polio survivors in Snohomish County.

For more information about the support group, call 425-488-0219.

Perhaps from her days of paralysis, Boyd has moments of claustrophobia. When she’s in a small room, she said, there doesn’t seem to be enough air.

She conquers those thoughts with a positive attitude.

“I was too scared to be angry,” Boyd said. “Everyone with polio was so scared.”

And yes, her nose itched. She said those trapped in iron lungs without the use of hands and arms would holler for someone to stop by and do the scratching. She graciously accepts help from others as muscles continue to wither.

“Polio is my life,” Boyd said. “It’s the life I live.

Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.[URL]

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Polio support group

The Everett Polio Support Group meets at 1 p.m. the second Saturday of each month at Providence Regional Medical Center, 916 Pacific Ave., Everett. All polio survivors and their friends and families are welcome to attend, said Rhonda Whitehead, group leader. Membership is free. For more information, call 425-488-0219.