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<\/p>\nPaul Alexander lived a life unlike many others. For the majority of his life, he\u2019s was inside an iron lung, and he was one of the last people in the world still using the respirator which dates back to the 1928.<\/p>\n
Despite his unusual circumstances, he\u2019s lived an incredibly full life and he\u2019s never accepted anything less.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not going to accept from anybody their limitations on my life. Not gonna do it. My life is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Paul was just six years old he ran into his family\u2019s home in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and told his mother he wasn\u2019t feeling well. Since his birth in 1946, Paul had been a normal, vibrant, and active child \u2013 but now something was clearly wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, not my son,\u201d Paul recalled his mother saying.<\/p>\n
Following doctor\u2019s orders, he spent the next several days in bed recovering, but the boy clearly had polio, and he was not getting better. Less than a week after he started feeling sick he couldn\u2019t hold anything nor could he swallow or breathe.<\/p>\n
His parents finally rushed to the hospital where he joined countless other children experiencing similar symptoms.<\/p>\n
Before vaccines were available for polio, more than 15,000 people were paralyzed from the virus. Polio, an incredibly contagious infection, can spread even when an infected person has no symptoms.<\/p>\n
The symptoms of polio include fatigue, fever, stiffness, muscle pain, and vomiting. In rarer cases, polio can also cause paralysis and death.<\/p>\n
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Paul was examined by a doctor and pronounced dead, but then another doctor took a look at him and gave him another chance at life.<\/p>\n
The second doctor performed an emergency tracheotomy, and following the surgery, Paul was placed inside an iron lung.<\/p>\n
When he eventually woke up, three days later, he was among several rows of children also encased in iron lungs.<\/p>\n
\u201dI didn\u2019t know what had happened. I had all kinds of imaginings, like I\u2019d died. I kept asking myself: Is this what death is? Is this a coffin? Or have I gone to some undesirable place?\u201d the Texas native told As It Happens host Carol Off in 2017.<\/p>\n
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Paul, who also had a tracheotomy, couldn\u2019t speak, making the whole event even more terrifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to move, but I couldn\u2019t move. Not even a finger. I tried to touch something to figure it out, but I never could. So it was pretty strange.\u201d<\/p>\n
The machine, invented in the late 1920s, was the first to ventilate a human being. It was often referred to in the early days as the \u201cDrinker respirator\u201d the device is hermetically sealed from the neck down and creates a negative pressure in the chamber that draws air into the patient\u2019s lungs. If it generates overpressure, the air is forced out of the lungs again, and the patient exhales.<\/p>\n
Paul spent 18 months inside the metal canister recovering from the initial infection. And he wasn\u2019t alone. The year Paul was infected by the virus, 1952, was a very dark year looking at the statistics.<\/p>\n
Almost 58,000 people, primarily children, contracted the virus in the U.S in 1952. Sadly, 3,145 of them died.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as you can see, rows and rows of iron lungs. Full of children,\u201d he said, according to The Guardian.<\/p>\n
While some may have given up their will to live, it only fueled Paul\u2019s will.<\/p>\n
He would hear doctors say, \u201dHe\u2019s going to die today\u201d or \u201cHe shouldn\u2019t be alive\u201d whenever they passed by him, and he wanted to prove them wrong.<\/p>\n