One of the last persons with an iron lung is a 76-year-old guy who was paralyzed by polio at age 6 and still says, “My life is amazing

Paul Alexander, 76, has led an extraordinary life, having lived most of it using an iron lung. He is one of the last people in the world to rely on the 1928-era respirator.

Despite his unusual circumstances, Paul has led a very fulfilling life, never settling for less.

“I am not going to accept from anybody their limitations on my life. Not gonna do it. My life is incredible.”

At six years old, Paul came home to his family’s house in a Dallas, Texas, suburb and told his mother he wasn’t feeling well. Born in 1946, he had always been a healthy, happy, and energetic child, but something was clearly wrong.

“Oh my God, not my son,” Paul recalled his mother saying.

Following the doctor’s recommendations, he spent the next few days recuperating in bed, but it was clear he had polio and was not improving. Less than a week after he first felt ill, he lost his ability to swallow, breathe, or grasp anything.

When his parents eventually took him to the hospital, he joined many other children with the same symptoms.

Before polio vaccines were available, the virus incapacitated more than 15,000 individuals annually. Even asymptomatic individuals could spread polio, which presented symptoms like fatigue, fever, stiffness, muscle pain, and vomiting. In rare cases, polio resulted in paralysis and death.

After being initially declared dead by one doctor, Paul was given a second chance at life by another, who performed an emergency tracheotomy and placed him in an iron lung.

Three days later, when Paul awoke, he found himself surrounded by rows of children also in iron lungs.

“I didn’t know what had happened. I had all kinds of imaginings, like I’d died. I kept asking myself: Is this what death is? Is this a coffin? Or have I gone to some undesirable place?” Paul told As It Happens host Carol Off in 2017.

Unable to speak due to the tracheotomy, the situation was even more frightening.

“I tried to move, but I couldn’t move. Not even a finger. I tried to touch something to figure it out, but I never could. So it was pretty strange.”

The iron lung, developed in the late 1920s, was the first machine to ventilate a person. Hermetically sealed from the neck down, it creates negative pressure that draws air into the patient’s lungs. When pressure is relieved, the patient exhales.

Paul spent no less than 18 months in the metal container recovering from the initial illness. He wasn’t alone; 1952, the year Paul contracted polio, saw over 58,000 cases in the United States, mostly among children, and 3,145 deaths.

“Rows and rows of iron lungs as far as the eye can see. Full of kids,” Paul reportedly said.

While some might have lost the will to live, Paul was only strengthened by the challenge.

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Hearing doctors say, “He’s going to die today” or “He shouldn’t be alive,” only made him more determined to survive.

And survive he did!

Released from the hospital in 1954, Paul soon realized that his life had fundamentally changed, but he was ready to face it head-on.