I had never heard of Mark O'Brien when Jessica Yu's "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien" won Best Documentary Short Subject at the Academy Awards. But the documentary shows not only what O'Brien went through, but how he wanted to be known to the world. Basically, he wanted to be known not as a cripple, but as a human. Despite spending most of his life in an iron lung, the polio-afflicted O'Brien managed to be a journalist and poet until his death in 1999.
Progress with polio has gotten made since the documentary's release. In 2014, only Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan saw cases of the disease, and in 2015 Nigeria had stopped the spread. It sounds like a terrible disease. In the end, Mark O'Brien deserves a lot of credit for what he accomplished, and Jessica Yu deserves credit for bringing his story to the world. I understand that her most recent movie was about water crises.
I recommend the documentary.