I ran across a news story today regarding the death of Dianne Odell, a woman who spent 60 years in an iron lung. Her death was the result of a power outage at her home, despite her family’s effort to manually operate the lung until they could get the generator to function.
How is this possible? The linked article states that she was fully encased in this contraption with the exception of her head. How is it cleaned? Even if she had a catheter and colostomy bag (is that the correct term?), how were these changed if the tank needed to be airtight at all times in order to function?
One thing I could never figure out is how they kept patients from developing bedsores in iron lungs. Motion is even more restricted in them than in typical hospital beds, but clearly people could live in them for decades.
I could never find anyone who had real experience with them, though. Can anyone shed some light on the subject?
i wondered as well. one article (on a u.k. patient) stated that they could open the i.l. for brief bedding changes, and washing. would be no more than 2 minutes. i would think it would be really well planned and co-ordinated.
reading about ms.odell’s passing made me wonder about quite a number of things…
a. eating and drinking
b. the results of eating and drinking
c. how much movement she had
d. how her growth went from 3years old to full grown at 20ish
e. ordinary “female issues”
f. sort of d+ it was stated due to spine issues she could not use “modern” vent. methods. what were the skeletal issues?
all in all it seems that she and her family did all they could given the situation. and that there are more people in iron lungs than i thought.
