Paul Alexander, who is seventy-six, has lived a singular life. He is of the few people in the world who still uses the 1928 respirator, having spent the majority of his life with an iron lung.
Despite his unusual circumstances, he has led a very fulfilling life and has never settled for anything less.
“I refuse to accept anyone’s constraints on my existence. I won’t do that. I have the most amazing existence.
When Paul was six years old, he went inside his family’s suburban Dallas, Texas, home and told his mother that he wasn’t feeling well.
Since his birth in 1946, Paul had always been a healthy, cheerful, and active child, but all of a sudden it became apparent that something was wrong.
Oh my God, Paul remembered his mother saying, “Oh my God, not my son.”
He recovered in bed for the next four days as per the doctor’s orders, but the youngster was obviously suffering from polio and showed no signs of recovery. He became completely unable of breathing, swallowing, or holding anything in his hands less than a week after he initially experienced acute illness.
Upon his parents’ arrival at the hospital, he was among several other children with similar symptoms.
The infection rendered more than 15,000 people completely paralyzed prior to the development of polio vaccinations. Poliovirus can spread even in those who do not exhibit any symptoms.
The signs and symptoms of polio include vomiting, stiffness, fever, fatigue, and sore muscles. In fewer cases, polio can potentially cause death and paralysis.
Paul was checked by one doctor who pronounced him dead, but another doctor gave him another chance at life.
Paul was placed inside an iron lung by the second doctor upon completion of the emergency tracheotomy.
When he did wake up three days later, he was surrounded by numerous rows of children who had also received iron lung implants.
“I was unaware of what had transpired. I imagined everything, like though I had passed away. I wondered all the time: Is this what death is like? Is that a coffin? In 2017, the Texas native asked As It Happens anchor Carol Off, “Or have I gone to some undesirable place?”
The terrifying aspect of the circumstance was heightened by Paul’s tracheotomy, which prevented him from speaking.
“I tried to move, but I couldn’t move. Not even a digit. I tried to touch something to figure it out, but I never could. Thus, it was really peculiar.
The apparatus, which was developed in the late 1920s, was the first machine to ventilate a human.
A negative pressure is created in the chamber by the apparatus, which is hermetically sealed from the neck down, drawing air into the patient’s lungs. It was sometimes called the “Drinker respirator” in the early going.
The patient exhales as the air is forced out of their lungs again if it causes overpressure.
Paul spent at least eighteen months in the metal container before he recovered from his initial ailment. Nor was he by himself. Based on the available statistics, it appears that Paul’s illness began in a quite dismal year—1952, to be exact.
The virus was spread by more than 58,000 people in the US in 1952, the majority of whom were youngsters. Sadly, 3,145 of them died.
Iron lungs, endless rows as far as the eye could see. Complete with children,” he allegedly said.
While some might have given up on life, Paul was strengthened by it.
He wanted to refute the comments made by the doctors, who he would hear every time one passed by, saying things like, “He should not be alive,” or “He’s going to die today.”
And he did that in reality!
After his sickness, he soon realized that his life had profoundly changed even though he had been discharged from the hospital in 1954.
“I wasn’t very popular back then,” he remarked in a 2021 video interview. “I sensed that they were uneasy with me.”
But bit by little, his life started to get better with the help of Mrs. Sullivan, a therapist who visited him twice a week.
If he could “frog-breathe” for three minutes without using the iron lung—a technique that entails flattening your tongue and stretching your neck to trap air in your mouth—his therapist would get him a puppy.
After a year of arduous exertion, Paul was able to spend more and more time outside the iron lung.
He was the first person to graduate with honors from a Dallas high school at the age of 21 without ever having to physically visit the institution. He eventually decided to go to college after being turned down repeatedly, and Southern Methodist University accepted him.
He recounted, “They said I didn’t have the vaccination and I was too crippled.” “They welcomed me on two conditions after I tormented them for two years. First, that I receive the polio vaccine; second, that I would be under the care of a fraternity.
Following his graduation from Southern Methodist University, he proceeded to pursue a law education at the University of Texas in Austin. After passing the bar test, he began offering legal services in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
“And I wasn’t too bad at it either!”
Even after a thirty-year career in the courtroom, he stayed busy writing a book, which he typed by hand with a pen hooked to a stick.
According to a Gizmodo, Paul is supposedly one of the few people left alive within the almost completely destroyed machine. The 76-year-old is always confined to his antiquated iron lung and has spent a significant amount of his life in a can.
I’ve traveled with it; I packed it in a truck and brought it along. I lived in a dorm while attending college with it. Everyone was terrified by that, he claimed.
Paul’s specific type of iron lung hasn’t been made in the past fifty years due to the advanced technology and complexity of contemporary ventilators.
Despite the availability of new technology, the polio survivor still prefers his metal chamber.
However, seven years ago, the Dallas lawyer was obliged to make a panicked YouTube announcement after the metal lung nearly failed.
Thankfully, there are still a lot of abandoned devices across the country, which indicates that replacement parts are widely accessible. Paul has also benefited from the support of devoted users of legacy technology.
Many persons who contracted polio have passed away. How was the iron lung handled by them? They’ve been in barns, I think. In garages, I discovered them. Junk shops are where I’ve found them. Just enough, he adds, to scrounge [for] components.
Paul is currently working on a second book. He has outlived both his parents and his older brother.
Paul asserted that his meaningful life has been possible because he “never gave up.”
He declared, “I wanted to realize the dreams I had and to accomplish the things I was told I couldn’t.”
In the United States, polio has all but disappeared since 1979. Still, there is grounds for concern over the occasional occurrences of polio brought on by vaccination.
