Tomorrow is my 70th birthday. Only 57 years ago I celebrated my 13th birthday in an iron lung. Something in the rubber gasket that locks the air in the lung chamber caused a five inch long horizontal cut in the back of my neck. There were four lungs to each room and none of us could talk. Someone noticed a pool of blood on the floor and bandaged my neck. It didn't bother me until it started to heal and I couldn't scratch the itch.

I cried and was scolded by the beleaguered nurse. Another boy in the room kept mouthing the words water in some agitation. None of us in lungs could swallow so she ignored him. Finally it turned out the tap in the room sink had been left running. A final memory is of a 35 year old man who died in the lung next to me. His wife was not permitted in the room due to their isolation policy so she was looking in at the door when he died. She slipped noiseless to the floor.

I was only in the lung a couple months. My mom kept meticulous notes on a calendar which was discarded. When she died in 1988 I lost my historian. But it is just as well. I was at a polio survivors meeting where everyone told his story and they were surprisingly similar. I think I was the only one who learned to swallow by licking popsicles. At that meeting at least. I didn't look at the back of their necks.

Today my feet look normal and I slurped my coffee with a straw. Seventy beats thirteen.