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Mar 13, 2024 · BBC News. The polio survivor known as "the man in the iron lung" has died at the age of 78. Paul Alexander contracted polio in 1952 when he was six, leaving him paralysed from the neck down....
Mar 13, 2024 · Uncertain future. After two years in hospital, doctors began to cast doubt on Paul's future. That led his parents to make the brave decision to take him and his iron lung home, to live out his...
Mar 14, 2024 · CNN — Paul Alexander, who spent the vast majority of the past 70 years in an iron lung and defied expectations by becoming a lawyer and author, died Monday afternoon at the age of 78,...
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Apr 3, 2024 · Paul Alexander was one of thousands of American children who caught polio in the 1950s, and one of the severest cases to survive.
- Paul Alexander Contracts Polio and Starts His New Life in An Iron Lung
- The Man in The Iron Lung Pursues His Education
- Paul Alexander’s Inspiring Life in His Final Years
- The Death of Paul Alexander
Young Paul Alexander’s life changed on a sweltering July day in Texas in 1952. Pools were closed, as were movie theaters and almost all other public gathering spots. The polio epidemicraged as people sheltered in place, terrified of the new sickness with no cure. Alexander was playing outside with his brother when he suddenly felt ill and went into...
Alexander made friends once he was out of the hospital and able to leave the iron lung for longer periods, and on some afternoons, they pushed him around the neighborhood in his wheelchair. However, during the day, those friends were all busy at the one place where he desperately wanted to be: school. His mother had already taught him the basics of...
By the time he reached his 70s, Paul Alexander began to rely almost exclusively on his iron lung to breathe. “It’s exhausting,” he told The Dallas Morning Newsof his frog breathing technique in 2018. “People think I’m chewing gum. I’ve developed it into an art.” Still, Alexander outlived both his parents and his brother. He even outlived his origin...
Paul Alexander’s life was changed by one disease. And his death was brought about by another. In 2024, he contracted COVID-19 at the age of 78. At the end of February 2024, Alexander tested positive for the coronavirus. In a TikTok video, his social media manager explained that he had been “rushed to the emergency” room and the disease was “really,...
Mar 13, 2024 · Paul Alexander, who died at 78, was paralyzed with polio at age 6 and relied on the machine to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, build a...
Nov 22, 2017 · Polio survivor Paul Alexander has been using an iron lung for 65 years. He went to law school in it. And now he's writing a memoir about it.
