هاست

یک زن که عجایب پزشکی را به مبارزه طلبید و زندگی خود را در یک شش آهنی سپری می کرد به علت قطع برق ماشینی که به نفس کشیدن وی کمک می‌کرد، جان سپرد.

Dianne Odell، شصت و یک ساله در یک لوله 7 فوتی فلزی زندگی می‌کرد از سه سالگی به بیماری فلج اطفال مبتلا شد.

وی با اینکه درون یک شُش آهنی بستری شده بود به دبیرستان رفت، دیپلم گرفت و حتی دروس دانشگاه را گذراند و یک کتاب نوشت!

شش آهنی یا تهویه فشار منفی اولین بار در سال 1920 استفاده شد. آنها به وسیله تولید فشار روی شش ها سبب منقبض و منبسط شدن آنها می‌شدند و بیمار می‌توانست نفس بکشد.
شش آهنی شبیه کسانی است که در یک خوابگاه لوله‌ای شکل با یک در پوش در قسمت گردن، قرار می‌گرفتند.
بیمار به پشت دراز می‌کشید و فقط سرش بدون سرپوش در معرض دید بود و میتوانست از طریق یک آیینه زاویه‌دار تماس چشمی با بازدید کننده‌ها بر قرار کند.

Odell که توسط والدینش و دیگر اعضای خانواده‌اش نگهداری میشد با یک تلویزیون که از طریق دمیدن در یک لوله کوچک و روی یک کامپیوتر که با صدا کار می‌کرد ارتباط برقرار می‌نمود.

اولیای وی اذعان داشتند قطعی برقی که منجر به فوت او شد به دلیل افتادن یک درخت بر روی سیم برق روی داده است

MEMPHIS - A woman who defied medical odds and spent nearly 60 years in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died yesterday after a power failure shut down the machine that had kept her breathing, her family said.

more stories like thisDianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long metal tube since she was stricken by polio at the age of 3.

Family members were unable to get an emergency generator working after a power failure knocked out electricity to the Odell familys residence near Jackson, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, brother-in-law Will Beyer said.

"We did everything we could do, but we couldnt keep her breathing," Beyer said. "Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months, and she just didnt have the strength to keep going."

Captain Jerry Elston of the Madison County Sheriffs Department said emergency crews could do little to help. The local power company reported spotty power outages in the area because of a tree that fell on a power line.

Odell was afflicted with bulbospinal polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered that largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.

She spent her life in the iron lung, cared for by her parents, other family members, and aides provided by a nonprofit foundation. Though confined inside the 750-pound apparatus, Odell managed to get a high school diploma, take college courses, and write a childrens book about a "wishing star" named Blinky.

"Dianne was one of the kindest and most considerate people you could meet. She was always concerned about others and their well-being," said Frank McMeen, president of the West Tennessee Health Care Foundation, which helped raise money for equipment and nursing assistance for Odell.

Odell accepted her life with grace, McMeen said.

"Everyone she encountered came to her because they cared about her," he said, "so she grew up in her 61 years thinking every person is good."

Odells iron lung, similar to those used during the US polio epidemics that peaked in the 1950s, was a cylindrical chamber with a seal at the neck. She lay on her back with only her head exposed and made eye contact with visitors through an angled mirror. She operated a television set with a small blow tube and wrote on a voice-activated computer.

The positive and negative pressures produced by the machine forced air into her lungs and then expelled it. Iron lungs were largely replaced by positive-pressure airway ventilators in the late 1950s that give users much more freedom of movement. But a spinal deformity from the polio kept Odell from wearing a more modern, portable breathing device.

Joan Headley of Post-Polio Health International in St. Louis said about 30 people in the United States still rely on iron lungs, but few users are confined to them all the time. No one keeps records on the longest confinement, she said.

Caregivers could slide Odells bedding out of her iron lung for basic nursing care but only briefly, McMeen said.

Though Odell could not leave the iron lung, she was moved out of her home in the machine. For Odells 60th birthday, in February 2007, friends and family held a party for her, with about 200 guests, at a downtown hotel in Jackson, a town of about 50,000 residents.

"She had a 9-foot birthday cake, and she had letters . . . from people all over the country," McMeen said.

In a 2001 interview, Odell said she wrote her childrens book to show youngsters, especially those with physical disabilities, that they should never give up.

"Its amazing what you can accomplish if you see someone do the same thing," she said.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.