Lawyer, author and TikTok star spent 72 years in an iron lung

After being paralyzed by polio at the age of six, Paul Alexander spent much of his life attached to a yellow iron lung that kept him alive. He wasn’t expected to survive after that diagnosis, and even when he beat those odds, his life was largely limited by a machine in which he couldn’t move.

But the toll of living on an iron lung with polio did not stop Mr. Alexander from going to college, earning a law degree and practicing law for more than thirty years. As a boy he taught himself to breathe for minutes and later for hours, but he had to use the machine every day of his life.

He died Monday at the age of 78, according to a statement from his brother, Philip Alexander. on social media.

He was one of the last people in the United States to live in 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of his life, he attracted many followers on TikTok by sharing what it was like to live so long with the help of an outdated machine.

It was unclear what caused Mr. Alexander’s death. He said he was briefly hospitalized with the coronavirus in February TikTok account. After he got home, Mr. Alexander struggled to eat and hydrate while recovering from the virus, which attacks the lungs and can be especially 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 quickly became paralyzed and doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas placed him in an iron lung so he could breathe.

“One day, from a deep sleep, I opened my eyes 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 all very strange. Little did I know that with each new day my life would inevitably follow a path that would become unimaginably strange and more challenging.

While innovations in science and technology led to portable ventilators for people with breathing problems, Mr. Alexander’s chest muscles were too damaged to use another machine, and he was dependent on the iron lung for much of his life, according to The Dallas Morning Newsin which he was profiled in 2018.

While in 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, he started making videos about his life. Some discussed broader parts of his life, such as how he administered justice from the iron lung.

In other videos, he answered questions from his more than 330,000 followers about more mundane but interesting aspects of his daily life, such as how to free himself. (A caregiver had to unlock the iron lung and he used a urinal or a bedpan.)

In one videoMr. Alexander described the emotional and mental challenges of living in an iron lung.

“It’s lonely,” he said as you heard the machine humming 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 cherish.”

Mr Alexander said in the video that over the years he had received emails and letters from people struggling with anxiety and depression, and he offered some advice.

“Life is such an extraordinary thing,” he said. “Just a minute. It’s going to get better.”

Paul Richard Alexander was born in Dallas on January 30, 1946, the son of Gus Nicholas Alexander and Doris Marie Emmett. After playing outside one summer day in 1952, he came home with a 102-degree fever, headache and a stiff neck, his mother wrote in the foreword to his book.

“I had every reason to be shocked, and I was,” she wrote. “Polio, the dreaded disease of every parent, stalks our city like a great black monster, paralyzing and killing wherever it goes. Here was Paul with all the symptoms.”

Mr. Alexander spent several months in the hospital, where he came close to death several times.

“Finally the doctor called us one day and told us that Paul couldn’t live much longer and that if we wanted him at our home when he died, we could take him with us,” his mother wrote.

His journey home with the iron lung left workers at the hospital “on edge” and it took a truck with a generator in the bed to keep the machine running, his mother wrote.

When he was eight, Mr. Alexander learned to breathe on his own for three minutes by breathing in air “like a fish” and swallowing it into his lungs, he told The Dallas Morning News.

Mr. Alexander told the newspaper that he was motivated to learn to breathe by a caregiver who offered him a puppy if he tried to learn to breathe on his own. He got 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 homeschooled students through the Dallas Independent School District, and in 1967 he graduated second in his class from WW Samuell High, according to The Dallas Morning News.

“The only reason I didn’t come first,” he told the newspaper, “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 the ‘Alcalde’, the alumni magazine from the University of Texas.

By 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 dorm brought him to class in a wheelchair, according to the Alcalde. He then studied law at the University of Texas and received his law degree in 1984.

Mr. Alexander is survived by his brother, his nephew Benjamin Alexander, his niece Jennifer Dodson and his sister-in-law Rafaela Alexander, according to Dignity monument. His funeral service is scheduled for March 20 at Grove Hill Funeral Home & Memorial Park in Dallas.

Before his death, in a video posted on TikTok on Jan. 31, Mr. Alexander said he was surprised and moved by the response to his videos.

“It makes me feel like there’s someone who really cares about me,” he said. “I wish I could hug you all.”