Paul Alexander, known as “Polio Paul” and living 70 years in an iron lung, dies

(CNN) –– Paul Alexander, who spent most of the past 70 years in an iron lung and defied life’s expectations, died Monday at age 78, according to his brother Philip Alexander.

His death was announced Tuesday on a GoFundMe page initially created to help pay for his housing and medical care.

“Reading all the comments and knowing that Paul inspires so many people is absolutely incredible. “I’m so grateful,” Philip said on the GoFundMe page.

The exact cause of Paul’s death is unclear. He was hospitalized three weeks ago due to a Covid-19 infection, but was already testing negative this week, Philip Alexander said.

“Paul, we will miss you but we will always remember you. Thank you for sharing your story with us,” Christopher Ulmer, organizer of the GoFundMe fundraiser, wrote on the page.

Paul contracted polio in the summer of 1952 at age 6. It was the height of the polio epidemic: the US. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 21,000 cases of paralytic polio were reported in the United States that year.

According to the CDC, polio is currently considered eradicated in the United States thanks to vaccines developed in the late 1950s.

The illness left Paul paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own. According to his autobiography, he was placed in an iron lung, a large metal cylinder that changes air pressure to stimulate breathing.

Paul’s mother Doris Alexander said in her autobiography, “The doctors told us that Paul would not live. “There were times when the power failed and then the lungs had to be manually pumped. “Our neighbors ran to help us.”

Paul spent the next seven decades in an iron lung. In March 2023, the Guinness Book of Records declared him the world’s longest-living iron lung patient.

Paul’s ambitions were not limited by his position. He learned breathing techniques that allowed him to get out of the iron lung for a few hours at a time. He graduated from college, earned a law degree, and practiced as a courtroom attorney for 30 years.

He also published his autobiography “Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung”, titled after his feat of learning to breathe independently for at least three minutes, a feat that took him a year to master and That’s what they were for. According to the book, reward with dogs.

Paul told CNN in 2022 that he was working on another book. He demonstrated his writing process by using a pen attached to a plastic stick in his mouth to tap the keys on the keyboard.

“I have big dreams. “I’m not going to accept anybody’s limitations,” he said in the interview. “My life is incredible”.

In January, he created the TikTok account “Polio Paul”, in which he describes his achievements and “How do you go to the bathroom?” Answered questions about life in an iron lung like and “How can you be so positive?” At the time of his death, he had 300,000 followers and over 4.5 million likes.

Paul was also an advocate of polio vaccination. In his first TikTok video, he said, “Millions of children are not protected from polio. They must be before another epidemic occurs.