After being paralyzed by polio at age 6, Paul Alexander was confined for much of his life to a yellow iron lung that kept him alive. He was not expected to survive this diagnosis, and even when he beat those odds, his life was limited mainly by a machine in which he could not move.
But the toll of life on an iron lung with polio didn’t stop Mr. Alexander from going to college, getting a law degree and practicing law for more than 30 years. As a boy, he taught himself to breathe for minutes and later hours at a time, but had to use the machine every day of his life.
He died on Monday at the age of 78, according to a statement by his brother, Philip Alexander, on social media.
He was one of the last few people in the United States to live inside an iron lung, which works by rhythmically changing the air pressure in the chamber to force air in and out of the lungs. And in the last weeks of his life, he attracted fans on TikTok by sharing what it was like to live so long with the help of an antiquated machine.
It was not clear what caused Mr. Alexander’s death. He was briefly hospitalized with coronavirus in February, according to his TikTok account. After returning home, Mr Alexander struggled with food and hydration as he recovered from the virus, which attacks the lungs and can be particularly dangerous for people who are older and have breathing problems.
Mr Alexander contracted polio in 1952, according to his book Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung. He was quickly paralyzed and doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas put him in an iron lung so he could breathe.
“One day I opened my eyes from a deep sleep and looked around for something, anything, familiar,” Mr. Alexander said in his book, which he wrote by putting a pen or pencil in his mouth. “Everywhere I looked it was very strange. Little did I know that with each new day my life would inevitably take a path that would become unimaginably stranger and more demanding.”
While innovations in science and technology have led to portable ventilators for people with breathing problems, Mr Alexander’s chest muscles were too damaged to use any other machine and he relied on an iron lung for much of his life, according to the The Dallas Morning News. , which introduced him in 2018.
When inside the machine, Mr. Alexander needed the help of others for basic tasks such as eating and drinking. For much of his life, that help came from his caregiver, Kathy Gaines, Mr. Alexander wrote in his book.
Mr Alexander launched his TikTok account in January and, with the help of others, began creating videos about his life. Some referred to broader aspects of his life, such as how he practiced law from the iron lung.
In other videos, he took questions from his more than 330,000 followers about more mundane but interesting aspects of his daily life, such as how he managed to relieve himself. (A caretaker had to unlock the iron lung and used a urinal or pan.)
In a video, Mr. Alexander explained the emotional and mental challenges of living inside an iron lung.
“It’s lonely,” he said as the engine hummed in the background. “Sometimes it’s desperate because I can’t touch anyone, my hands don’t move and no one touches me except on rare occasions, which I love.”
Mr. Alexander said in the video that over the years, he had received emails and letters from people struggling with anxiety and depression and offered some advice.
“Life is such an extraordinary thing,” he said. “Just wait. It will get better.”
Paul Richard Alexander was born on January 30, 1946 in Dallas to Gus Nicholas Alexander and Doris Marie Emmett. After playing outside one summer day in 1952, he came home with a 102-degree fever, a headache and a stiff neck, his mother wrote in the foreword to his book.
“I had every reason to be terrified, and I was,” she wrote. “Polio, the dreaded disease for every parent, stalked our city like a great black monster, maiming and killing wherever it went. Here was Pavlos with every symptom.”
Mr. Alexandros spent several months in the hospital, where he almost died several times.
“Finally one day the doctor called us and said Paul didn’t have much longer to live and if we wanted him in our house when he died we could take him,” his mother wrote.
His journey home with the iron lung had hospital workers “intense” and included a truck with a generator in the bed to keep the machine running, his mother wrote.
When he was 8, Mr. Alexander learned to breathe on his own for up to three minutes, gulping air “like a fish” and swallowing it into his lungs, he told the Dallas Morning News.
Mr Alexander told the paper he was motivated to learn to breathe by a carer who offered him a puppy if he tried to learn to breathe on his own. He took his puppy and it later became the inspiration for the title of his book, “Three Minutes for a Dog.”
Mr. Alexander was one of the first students to be home-schooled through the Dallas Independent School District and, in 1967, graduated second in his class from WW Samuell High, according to The Dallas Morning News.
“The only reason I didn’t get first,” he told the paper, “is because I couldn’t do the biology lab.”
After high school, Mr. Alexander attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin to study economics and finance, according to “Alcalde,” the University of Texas alumni magazine.
Learning to breathe on his own, Mr. Alexander was able to live outside the iron lung for hours at a time, and students from his dormitory took him to class in a wheelchair, according to the Alcalde. He then attended law school at the University of Texas and earned his law degree in 1984.
According to Dignity Memorial, Mr. Alexander is survived by his brother, nephew Benjamin Alexander, niece Jennifer Dodson and sister-in-law Raphaela Alexander. His funeral is scheduled for March 20 at Grove Hill Funeral Home & Memorial Park in Dallas.
Before his death, in a video posted on TikTok on January 31, Mr Alexander said he had been surprised and moved by the response to his videos.
“It makes me feel like there’s someone who really cares about me,” she said. “I wish I could hug each of you.”
