{"id":177630,"date":"2018-01-15T12:44:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T17:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=177630"},"modified":"2018-01-12T22:52:16","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T03:52:16","slug":"paralyzed-polio-the-right-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/paralyzed-polio-the-right-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Man paralyzed from polio proves that everyone should have the right to life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sixty-eight years ago, Paul Alexander contracted polio during the biggest polio outbreak in the United States. It was 1952 and Alexander was only six years old. The disease paralyzed him from the neck down within a matter of days and he required the use of an “iron lung” to keep him alive. Despite nearly seven decades confined to the machine, he has led a successful life, proving that life with a disability is worthy of living, and that everyone should have the right to life.<\/p>\n

“I was just a kid like everybody else,” he said in a video from Gizmodo. “I began to feel a little bit ill. When Mom saw my face, she knew. She put me immediately to bed. Over the next five days, I lost everything – couldn’t move, couldn’t walk. And finally, the last day, I couldn’t breathe. My diaphragm was gone, destroyed. My body muscles were gone, destroyed. Which left me in the iron lung for the rest of my life.”<\/p>\n

Just a child, when he woke up in the hospital in the iron lung, Alexander was confused. Realizing he couldn’t move or speak\u00a0due to a tracheotomy, he was obviously frightened. He was in the hospital for 18 months and as time went on, he knew he had to make a choice.<\/p>\n

“The early part was very, very scary, but I’m an Alexander,” he told Catholic Online. “My parents taught me to have a lot of pride and self-respect, and God taught me to believe I could do anything I dreamed of – and I did. So instead of letting Polio break me or kill me, I fought hard. The more it would knock me down, the angrier I would get. That anger, I’ve often said, is what kept me alive.”<\/p>\n

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