Paul Alexander, the lawyer who gained worldwide fame as “Polio Paul,” has died at the age of 78. He spent around 72 of them with an iron lung – after suffering from polio at the age of six. Now he succumbed to a corona infection.
With his positive attitude to life, Paul Alexander became an inspiring figure worldwide.
Paul has lived in the iron lung for over 70 years
In 1952 this is raging Poliovirus (polio) in the USA. Around ten thousand children become ill. Paul’s mother also had bad thoughts when her son Paul came home from playing one day and showed the first signs of paralysis. A Tracheotomy saves his life. From then on he was paralyzed from the neck down. The disease means his body can no longer breathe on its own.
From now on, a 600 kilogram steel colossus will make him breathe. The Iron lung is a two meter tall one Metallzylinder, which surrounds the body up to the neck. In the 1950s, the negative pressure machine was used to artificially breathe polio sufferers. A bellows sucks air out of the cylinder, forcing the lungs to expand and take in air. In the opposite process, air is let in again so that the lungs empty.
He learns to paint with his mouth and becomes a lawyer
After spending most of his first few years in the mechanical ventilator, Paul learns to breathe on his own. His self-learned breathing technique, in which he gasps for air and pushes it through his throat, enables him to leave the machine at short notice. He closes it High school and law school from the University of Texas. He then worked as a lawyer for decades. “I knew that if I wanted to do anything with my life, it had to be a mental thing,” he tells the Guardian 2020 in an interview.
In the same year Paul published his memoirs, which he has been working on for eight years. He reportedly writes these by typing on a keyboard with a plastic pen and dictating to a friend. With his story, Paul becomes one great inspiration worldwide. Despite his disability, Alexander manages to paint with his mouth, represent clients in court, and participate in disability rights protests.
Paul no longer wants to leave his machine
Iron lungs save in the Polio epidemics of the 1950s thousands of children’s lives over the years. But the machines are only intended for a short stay. Advances in medicine brought ventilators and made the large devices obsolete in the 1960s. But Alexander decides to stay in his top hat. He has become too used to his “old iron horse,” as he affectionately calls his machine. This makes him the last person in the world to live in an iron lung. One Fundraising-Page launched by organizer Christopher Ulmer, recently helps to raise money for his medical and accommodation bills.
Paul told the Guardian that he became an activist by accident. “You have to understand that there were no cripples back then… Wherever I went, I was the only one. Restaurant, movie theater… I thought, “Wow, there’s no one else out here. “I’ll just pave the way,” Alexander said. “I somehow saw myself as a representative of a group. This is why I fought“. And he fought. For doctors, his long life is nothing short of a miracle. In his final years, Alexander was almost permanently tied to the 300 kilo machine. Now the iron lung has stopped breathing.
2024-03-14 12:17:15
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