13. Portable Iron Lung
Portable iron lungs, or cuirass respirators, were much smaller versions of iron lungs that worked very similarly. The pressure was applied to and removed from the chest to simulate respiration, just as in the iron lungs, but the pressure was applied to a much smaller area, which allowed the respirators to be portable. However, the limitations were mostly the same with speech only being possible upon the exhalation phase and eating and drinking needing to be carefully timed.
Disability activist and Polio victim Mark O’Brien put to words the experience of living with a permanent respirator in his poem “Breathing.”
Grasping for straws is easier;
You can see the straws.
“This most excellent canopy, the air, look you,”
Presses down upon me
At fifteen pounds per square inch,
A dense, heavy, blue-glowing ocean,
Supporting the weight of condors
That swim its churning currents.
All I get is a thin stream of it,
A finger’s width of the rope that ties me to life
As I labor like a stevedore to keep the connection.
Water wouldn’t be so circumspect;
Water would crash in like a drunken sailor,
But air is prissy and genteel,
Teasing me with its nearness and pervading immensity.
The vast, circumambient atmosphere
Allows me but ninety cubic centimeters
Of its billions of gallons and miles of sky.
I inhale it anyway,
Knowing that it will hurt
In the weary ends of my crumpled paper bag lungs.