Paul Alexander, 76, has lived a life unlike many others. For the majority of his life, he’s lived with an iron lung, and he’s one of the last people in the world still using the respirator which dates back to the 1928.
Despite his unusual circumstances, he’s lived an incredibly full life and he’s never accepted anything less.
“I am not going to accept from anybody their limitations on my life. Not gonna do it. My life is incredible.”
When Paul was just six years old he ran into his family’s home in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and told his mother he wasn’t feeling well. Since his birth in 1946, Paul had been a normal, vibrant, and active child – but now something was clearly wrong.
“Oh my God, not my son,” Paul recalled his mother saying.
Following doctor’s 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’t hold anything nor could he swallow or breathe.
His parents finally rushed to the hospital where he joined countless other children experiencing similar symptoms.
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.
The symptoms of polio include fatigue, fever, stiffness, muscle pain, and vomiting. In rarer cases, polio can also cause paralysis and death...CONTINUE READING