Paul Alexander, who defied expectations by becoming a lawyer and author despite spending the majority of the previous 70 years in an iron lung, passed away on Monday afternoon at the age of 78, according to his brother Philip Alexander.
A GoFundMe page established to assist with his housing and medical expenses was where his death was revealed on Tuesday.
Reading through the comments and realizing how many people Paul inspired is amazing. In the GoFundMe page, Philip wrote, "I am just so grateful.
Paul's death's precise cause is unknown. According to Philip, the Covid-19 infection that brought him to the hospital three weeks ago was no longer causing him to test positive this week.
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"Paul, you'll be missed, but never forgotten. The GoFundMe fundraiser's organizer, Christopher Ulmer, wrote on the page, "Thank you for sharing your story with us."
When Paul was six years old in the summer of 1952, he contracted polio. It was the height of the polio epidemic; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that year that there were over 21,000 cases of paralytic polio in the US.
According to the CDC, vaccinations developed in the late 1950s have eradicated polio in the United States.
Paul was unable to breathe on his own and was paralyzed from the neck down by the illness. According to his autobiography, he was put in an iron lung, a sizable metal cylinder that changes air pressure to encourage breathing.
“The doctors told us Paul could not possibly live,” Doris Alexander, Paul’s mother, said in his autobiography. “There were a few times when the electrical power failed and then the lung had to be pumped by hand. Our neighbors would run over and help us pump it.”
Paul breathed through an iron lung for the next seven decades. In March 2023, Guinness World Records declared him the world's longest-surviving iron lung patient.
Paul's illness did not stop him from pursuing his goals. He could spend several hours outside of the iron lung using breathing techniques he had learned. After completing his education, he obtained a law degree and worked as a courtroom attorney for thirty years.
He also self-published his autobiography, “Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung,” titled after the accomplishment of learning how to breathe independently for at least three minutes – a feat that took him a year to master and was rewarded with a dog, according to the book.
