Paul Alexander has been paralyzed from the neck down since 1952 due to polio.
Paul Alexander has died aged 78 after spending 70 years in an iron lung. He contracted polio when he was 6 years old and was forced to live in the 600-pound metal structure. Mr Alexander, widely known as “Polio Paul”, has been paralyzed from the neck down by the disease since 1952 and is unable to breathe on his own. He was taken to a hospital in Texas after developing symptoms and woke up in a mechanical lung.
His death was announced in his GoFundMe page Tuesday (March 12). “After surviving polio as a child, he lived in an iron lung for more than 70 years. During this time, Paul went to college, became a lawyer, and became a published author. His story is legendary Traveled around the world and had a positive impact on people everywhere. Paul was an incredible role model and will continue to be remembered,” said the page’s creator, Christopher Ulmer, in an update said.
A message from his brother Philip read: “I am so grateful to everyone who donated to my brother’s fundraiser. It allowed him to live out his final years stress-free.
Mr Alexander has faced many challenges since his birth in 1946. He lived through the worst polio epidemic in U.S. history, with nearly 58,000 cases, mostly children.
The disease severely affected Mr. Alexander, requiring him to use a machine to breathe, the New York Post reported.
Poliomyelitis, or Poliomyelitis, is a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis. This left Mr. Alexander so weak that he couldn’t breathe.
He underwent an emergency tracheotomy and was placed in an iron lung to help his body fight the deadly disease. Since then, he has relied on machines from head to toe to survive.
The iron lung uses a technique called “frog breathing,” which uses throat muscles to force air through the vocal cords, allowing the patient to swallow one mouthful of oxygen at a time, pushing it down the throat and into the lungs.
