Paul Alexander still remembers the sound of a screen door screaming on a rainy July 1952. At the time, a few-year-old boy had just run away after playing in the field behind his house. There was pain. He walked dragging mud onto the kitchen floor. The door closed behind him. He knew his mother would go crazy when he saw the mess, but the fear in his voice upset him. “God, please, no,” he said. He knew then that polio had come for his son
1952 was a nightmare for many parents. It was the worst year of polio in the United States, with about 60,000 polio cases reported nationwide. Some cities have blocked access to popular communal venues — movie theaters, swimming pools. The virus usually infects children, entering the body through small particles, sneezing or coughing through the mouth. It produced flu-like symptoms and was capable of attacking a person’s spinal cord or brain, leading to paralysis and possibly death. The infection was caused by pain and a high fever in Alexander’s body. It started, but soon after, he lost the ability to walk, swallow and breathe. The doctors performed a tracheotomy and inserted it into the iron lung. A cell tank treated polio patients who had difficulty breathing on their own. During the epidemic, hospital wards were set up with these machines. They stimulate the chest and stimulate breathing with different air pressures. The children usually spent a week or two recovering from the disease, lying on their backs, unable to do much work. But Alexander did not get out of it.
Eighteen months after admission, doctors said he could go home, thinking he would not spend much time there. His body was almost completely paralyzed from the neck, and he could not breathe outside the iron lungs. His family had brought him and his lungs home and this would be their last Christmas together. But Alexander is still alive today. He is 74 years old and lives in Dallas — and for the second time in his life he is at risk of contracting the virus. Unlike the polio virus, corona virus does not affect children disproportionately. The people most at risk of developing COVID-19 are adults over the age of 65 and those with basic medical conditions. Alexander examined both boxes. As the world waited for a vaccine, Alexander and his bodyguards were restricting contact with others. He still relies on iron lungs to keep him alive. In fact, he is one of the last people in the world to use a machine. Although more advanced ventilators have been invented over the years, Alexander is still trapped by his iron lungs. As a child, he learned to breathe without extension — a technique that opened the door for him. When he was 8 years old, a physical therapist taught him to “use the frog’s breath”, or the muscles in his mouth and throat to inflate air into his lungs. He was wary of people when he was scared in the hospital when they forced him to try to breathe outside his lungs, which caused him to get out. But the doctor persuaded her to keep trying by contracting with him: if she could learn to breathe outside her lungs for three minutes, she would give it to one of her boxer players. After working on it for a year, Breathing on his own meant he could spend hours outside the iron lungs. He also adopted other methods. His father made a stick that he could put in his mouth to play with his toys. (Today, he uses a similar device to dial the phone and type on the keyboard.) He also learned to paint and write with a paintbrush or pencil in his mouth. As he grew older, he felt Did he have to go to school if he wanted to succeed? There was no other way. Alexander, one of the first students in his school district to participate in the Home Bound program, graduated in the first grade of his class. He then studied at Southern Methodist University before moving to UT to study economics and finance. “I needed something big. For the first time in my life, he was away from home. He graduated in 1984 and graduated two years later. He spent many years as a lawyer. Representing clients in court from his wheelchair, following family law and handling bankruptcy cases. When new clients came to his office, he would look at the iron lungs and often ask, “What did he do?” Is it? “As Alexander grew older, he found it difficult to breathe on his own. Now, he was completely confined to his iron lungs. He stopped practicing for the past few years and set a new goal. Telling the story of his life: Lying on his back in an iron lung, he wrote using a pen attached to a plastic rod. A reflection above his head reflects his notes towards him. In april Self-published three minutes for a dog. It took eight years to complete.
One of the reasons Alexander wants to share his story is because people understand the severity of polio. After American virus expert Jonas Salik developed a successful polio vaccine in 1955, countries launched immunization campaigns. Since 1979, there have been no polio cases in the United States, meaning many Americans do not understand how widespread polio once was. Children around the world are vaccinated against the disease until they are 6 years old, but vaccine-preventable diseases such as polio or measles or mumps have not disappeared. Although it is on the verge of extinction, polio is still common in three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.