Some remarkable stories of survivors - From the cluttered desk with Keith Roulston

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I wrote about childhood diseases that were a danger when I was young, but have since disappeared because of the emergence of vaccines. Last week, I read the extraordinary story of a man who had suffered from polio when he was six but persevered to live a productive and interesting life before dying recently.

 

Paul Alexander was infected with polio in 1952. It left him paralyzed from the neck down and he began using an iron lung, a machine that encased his body as the air pressure within the chamber forced air in and out of his lungs.

 

But Alexander didn’t let his misfortune rule his life. “He loved to laugh,” said his longtime friend Daniel Spinks. “He was just one of the bright stars of this world.” 

 

Gary Cox, a friend of Alexander’s since college, said his friend was always smiling. “He was so friendly. He was always happy.”

You may have noticed the word “college” mentioned above. Being in an iron lung was only an extra challenge for Alexander. Despite his added handicap, he managed to make his way into college and earned a law degree in 1984.

 

He trained himself to breathe without the iron lung and to live outside of the contraption for several hours a day. His friend Spinks said he learned how to “gulp air down his lungs” in order to be out of the iron lung for part of the day. Using a stick in his mouth, Alexander could type on a computer and use the phone.

 

A book Alexander wrote about his life, Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung, was published in 2020. Cox said the title comes from a promise Alexander’s nurse made to him when he was a young boy: He’d get a dog if he could teach himself to breathe on his own for three minutes.

 

“That took a good maybe two years, three years before he was able to stay out for three minutes and then 10 minutes and then eventually he got the strength to learn to stay out all day,” Spinks said.

 

And indeed, Alexander did get his puppy.

 

Alexander built a big following for himself on social media. “Being positive is a way of life for me,” he told viewers in one of his “Conversations With Paul” posts on TikTok.

 

As he got older, Alexander spent more time in the iron lung – though finding parts for the machines, which are no longer made, took more and more effort for his friends. 

 

Alexander had recently been admitted to a Dallas hospital after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and, ironically, ultimately died of that disease that’s become somewhat similar to the killers of an earlier time.  

 

Reading about Alexander caused me to get the 2017 movie Breathe off our movie shelf and rewatch it the other night. It was made by producer Jonathan Cavendish in tribute to his late father Robin, who suffered from polio as an adult while in Africa in the later 1950s (after most people in Europe and North America had been vaccinated). The movie is a special tribute to his mother, Diana, who refused to give in to the disease and fought for her family.

 

The Cavendishes had gone from England to Africa shortly after they were married, where Robin was buying coffee beans. Shortly after Diana found out she was pregnant with Jonathan, Robin was diagnosed with the disease.

 

The indomitable Diana prepared her family, with baby Jonathan by then, and flew back to England. At first in a home with several other bed-ridden polio survivors, Robin asked her to let him die. She was determined to change the situation.

 

She bought an inexpensive house and had her husband moved there, very much against the advice of the polio home’s director. There, she had her husband in a bed on the main floor, his breathing equipment plugged in to electricity, and she set up her own bed beside his. There were a few times when the power supply was interrupted, but he was happier.

 

But he wanted a better life. Luckily he had inventive friends, including a university inventor who created a chair with the breathing machine supplied with electricity from a battery.

 

Later still, the inventor came up with an improved design and another expert suggested they raise money so other polio victims 

could have similar chairs and be free from long-term care homes.

 

But eventually, Paul’s lungs couldn’t deal with the rich oxygen and began bleeding, and he died in the late 1970s when young Jonathan was only about 20.

 

After reading about one remarkable polio survivor and seeing the movie about another, I was depressed when I heard about people who are upset because our government hasn’t moved faster in expanding the rights of people to seek a medical end to their lives. These two men lived remarkable lives despite horrible conditions. Did all the people seeking early death try as hard?