 "‘Polio Paul’ dies: The story of the American who survived in an iron lung for 70 years")
Paul Alexander, the American man who spent the vast majority of the past seven decades inside a 600-pound iron lung, died on Monday afternoon at the age of 78.
His death was announced Tuesday on a GoFundMe page set up by his brother Philip Alexander to help pay for his housing and health care. “It is absolutely incredible to read all the comments and know that so many people were inspired by Paul. I am just so grateful,” his brother said on the page.
The exact cause of his death is unclear. Paul was admitted to the hospital three weeks ago due to a COVID-19 infection but was no longer testing positive this week, Philip said, according to CNN.
The organiser of the fundraiser, Christopher Ulmer, said on the page, “Paul, you will be missed but always remembered. Thanks for sharing your story with us.”
Due to the illness, Paul had been paralysed from the neck down and was unable to breathe on his own since 1952. He lived his whole life within and outside of the iron lung by creating his own breathing technique, which he called “frog breathing.”
The technique allowed him to live some of his life outside of the metal device, which he refused to switch to a more advanced one.
Paul was recognised as the oldest iron lung patient in history by Guinness World Records in March.
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Numerous challenges
Paul, who was born in 1946, lived through the biggest polio outbreak in US history, which resulted in nearly 58,000 cases, the majority of whom were children. In 1955, a polio vaccine was authorised and widely injected into young people all over America. The polio virus was eradicated from the country in 1979, but it was too late for Paul.
His condition was so bad that he needed an emergency tracheotomy and had to breathe through a machine. According to Medscape, the iron lung is an airtight capsule covering everything but the head as it sucks oxygen through negative pressure, forcing the lungs to expand to allow the patient to breathe. Patients must lie down in the ventilator, which resembles a daunting metal coffin, with the device firmly strapped around their necks.
Since then, he relied entirely on the neck-to-toe machine, becoming one of the few people in the world who still utilised an iron lung. He told The Guardian that he had grown accustomed to his “old iron horse” by the time newer machines had been created. He was unwilling to have a new throat hole, which would have been necessary for the newest equipment.
Paul was in the hospital when physicians tried to get him to breathe on his own by forcing him out and turning off the machine, but it didn’t take long for him to turn blue and pass out. But as The Guardian previously reported, he was able to force some air into his lungs by “exhausting” himself with what he called “frog breathing.” Also known as glossopharyngeal breathing, it is the process of gulping down air and swallowing it.
According to Dailymail, Sullivan, Paul’s physical therapist, assisted him in creating the breathing technique. She encouraged him by promising him a puppy if he could go three minutes without the ventilator. Paul had finally acquired his puppy, who he named Ginger, after waiting a full year to do so. Once he was able to breathe on his own for extended periods of time, he was able to leave the iron lung and make his way first to the porch and then the yard.
Paul outlived both of his parents, his brother, and even his initial iron lung. That iron lung started to leak air in 2015, but Brady Richards was able to fix it thanks to a YouTube video of Paul screaming for assistance.
Despite being categorised as highly vulnerable to the virus, Paul had managed to withstand a fresh, lethal outbreak, living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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He was a trial lawyer!
Paul’s ambitions were not limited by his condition.
He was the first graduate of a Dallas high school at age 21 who had never actually been to a class. After having a lot of issues with university management, he was finally accepted into Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and he later enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin’s law school.
In order to help with physical tasks and hygiene, Paul had moved into a dorm and hired a caretaker. “When I transferred to the University of Texas, they were horrified to think that I was going to bring my iron lung down, but I did, and I put it in the dorm and I lived in the dorm with my iron lung,” Alexander recalled.
He worked towards his goal of becoming a trial lawyer, representing clients in court while dressed in a three-piece suit and a specially designed wheelchair that held his crippled body straight.
Along with staging a sit-in in support of disability rights, he also wrote and published his own autobiography, Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung. The 155-page memoir took five years to write; Paul wrote each page while holding a pen on a stick in his mouth.
He claimed that despite his circumstances, he never gave up on himself in an interview with filmmaker Mitch Summers in 2020.
According to Dailymail, he had said, “No matter where you’re from or what your past is, or the challenges you could be facing. You can truly do anything. You just have to set your mind to it, and work hard.”
Paul still worried that the “devil” of polio, which nearly took his life, may come back, though. “I can see hospitals inundated by polio victims again, an epidemic, I can see it so easily. I tell the doctors, it’s going to happen. They don’t believe me,” he had told The Guardian.
In January this year, he set up an account on TikTok, describing his accomplishments. He posted videos about life in an iron lung and talked about, “How do you go to the bathroom?” and “How do you stay so positive?” As per CNN, he had 300,000 followers and more than 4.5 million likes at the time of his demise.
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About iron lung
During a severe case of polio, a non-invasive negative-pressure ventilator called an “iron lung” is used to artificially support breathing, explained Dailymail.
They were originally used in the 1920s and function by applying pressure to the lungs, which causes them to dilate and contract to allow patients to breathe.
Most of the time, it would only be needed for one to two weeks, until the patient could breathe on their own, but some polio survivors who have lifelong respiratory paralysis depend on them every day.
Positive-pressure ventilators, like today’s respirators, have almost completely replaced them.
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Polio in the world
Polio is an infectious viral disease that can induce muscular weakness and paralysis, disrupt the central nervous system, and have an impact on respiratory function. It is spread by contaminated food and drink as well as direct contact with an infected individual.
The mid-20th century pandemic, sometimes known as poliomyelitis, killed thousands of people annually while sickening tens of thousands more.
By 2000, the World Health Organization had proclaimed that polio had been eradicated throughout the Americas and the western Pacific region. India, which in the 1990s saw 200,000 cases of the virus annually, was deemed polio-free in 2014.
There are currently dozens of cases of the virus, which only affects Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
With inputs from agencies
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