Dead after 60 years in iron lung

November 1, 2009
FILE PHOTOS: June Middleton photographed in 2004 in her iron lung and last year with her dog, Angel. Photo: Mario Borg and Jason South


A WOMAN who spent more than 60 years in an iron lung to treat polio has died, aged 83.

June Middleton, who died at a Melbourne nursing home on Friday, was struck down with polio at 22 and marked 60 years in the iron lung on April 5.

She celebrated the milestone with friends and her dog, Angel, by her side.

At the time, she described life spent in an iron lung for 16 hours a day in matter-of-fact terms.

''It's hard to explain but it's what you gotta do, make the most of it, get over the obstacles on the way,'' she said.

''It doesn't pay to be miserable,'' she said.

Ms Middleton's passion for dancing was one of the biggest blows dealt by the disease.

But it was no match for letting go of Noel, the love of her life whom she was set to marry the same year she was diagnosed with polio.

He stood by her for five years, before eventually marrying and having children.

But she reportedly kept a faded photograph of herself in her wedding gown in her room for the rest of her life.

Ms Middleton entered the Guinness World Records in 2006 as the person who had spent the longest time in an iron lung.




http://www.smh.com.au/national/dead...91101-hqyy.html

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"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4

stephanie

Bittersweet story. She seems to have had a wonderful attitude, but still a very sad life. That photo of her and her dog brings tears.

Vaccinations are indeed such horrible things.

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Roscoe and Miss Priss

Polio is a horrible disease. This woman could not have received vaccine at age 22, but instead appears to have been one of the disease's many victims.

From Wikipedia:

"Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis (or polio). The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated poliovirus that he had received from Hilary Koprowski. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962.[1] Because there is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in immunocompetent individuals, polioviruses have no non-primate reservoir in nature, and survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of time appears to be remote. Therefore, interruption of person-to person transmission of the virus by vaccination is the critical step in global polio eradication.[2] The two vaccines have eradicated polio from most countries in the world,[3][4] and reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1652 cases in 2007.[5][6]"

I should have labeled my comment as sarcasm directed at the anti-vax crowd. It wasnt addressing this woman plight per se, but rather the countless individuals who were saved a similar fate because they were vaccinated.

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Roscoe and Miss Priss

Ah.

I can say with all honesty that I would rather be dead than live in an iron lung.

Maybe I'd change my mind if actually faced with that choice.

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Polio struck her before the vaccine was available. Linda was her name. I also had a next-door neighbor who was stricken. Don't know if he was stricken later in life or not, but he was considerably older than me and Linda. He didn't need an iron lung (nor did Linda), but his back was humped up.

I still remember going to the park district for the free polio vaccine. I think we got a shot one year and then the next year and maybe a third year we got oral polio boosters. It wasn't something my folks would have refused; it was all FREE and we'd all seen the results of polio at the time.

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"If stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out of it?" - Will Rogers.

That poor woman. I'm so glad she had such a lovely dog friend.

When I was 9 months old I was left in the care of a neighbor (on an island of the coast of Maine) while my parents traveled down to Connecticut. Days after, a hurricane came up the coast and wiped out some bridges and roads so my parents were unable to return to the island for weeks.

Meanwhile, the last polio epidemic ever to occur there swept across the island. The woman taking care of me contracted the disease and I was shortly thereafter handed off to another neighbor.

I always feel like the luckiest person when I remember this story of my infancy!

I always feel like the luckiest person when I remember this story of my infancy!

I reckon you were pretty darn lucky!

My great aunt had polio as a child. Her tongue and many of her facial muscles were affected, as well as one leg. Conversations with my aunt was frustrating for both parties. As she got older, much older, her speech got better (or maybe I just developed more patience). I spent time with her when she was in a nursing home and learned what a lovely intelligent woman was hiding under that drooling, stammering, crooked stance.

Needless to say, vaccination was something our family took quite seriously.

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"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4

stephanie

The only memory I have about polio is my girl scout leader. She was a mom with 2 daughters. The younger was in my class and a troopmate. Years before, the older sister had had polio when she was a very young child, and in nursing her, the mom caught it too. The daughter fully recovered, but the mom's legs were permanently affected. She wore braces on both legs from the knees down, and could only walk in a lurching manner with the assistance of two crutches. The metal ones that hold you at the elbows. She was a very pretty, petite woman, always dressed nicely, and I can only now imagine how that affected her image of herself. I remember as a kid hearing the daughter who recovered always felt guilty about having passed it to her mom.

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Roscoe and Miss Priss

Polio and victims? I know two personally, one aunt who recovered limping badly and having and speech problems and a friends father who needed rigurous disciplined exercize every day for all his life to keep up strength in one leg, he was just limping a bit and led an otherwise unaffected life.
Somewhat sad, the statistics in that age group was well represented in that line of family:
Ten kids, those that died before the age of ten died of meningitis and appendicits (before deadly antibiotics and deadly vaccinations from evil big pharma were available) one or two sons lost in the WW and one polio victim.