{"id":308776,"date":"2024-03-17T13:38:26","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T18:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=308776"},"modified":"2024-03-15T18:00:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T23:00:21","slug":"attorney-iron-lung-polio-died-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/attorney-iron-lung-polio-died-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Attorney who lived in iron lung from age six due to polio dies at 78: ‘God taught me to believe’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paul Alexander, who was known as “the man in the iron lung,” has died at the age of 78 not long after contracting Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Alexander had lived with the machine known as “the iron lung” since 1952 when he contracted polio at just six years old. Within days, the disease left him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe independently. The iron lung is a metal, horizontal cylinder that stimulates breathing in patients who are unable to use their respiratory muscles.<\/p>\n

When he first woke up in the hospital, a young boy unable to move or speak due to a tracheotomy, he was likely terrified. He stayed in the hospital for 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just a kid like everybody else,\u201d he said in a video from Gizmodo. \u201cI 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 \u2013 couldn\u2019t move, couldn\u2019t walk. And finally, the last day, I couldn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The iron lung has since been replaced by ventilators, but Alexander chose to keep his iron lung, saying he was used to it.<\/p>\n

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