Paul Alexander, who is 76 years old, has led a life that is unique. He has lived with an iron lung for the most of his life and is one of the last persons in the world to still utilize the 1928-era respirator.

He has had a life that is very fulfilling despite his odd circumstances, and he has never settled for anything less.

“I am not going to accept from anybody their limitations on my life. Not gonna do it. My life is incredible.”

Paul went inside his family’s home in a Dallas, Texas, suburb when he was just six years old and told his mother that he wasn’t feeling well.

Paul had always been a healthy, happy, and energetic kid since his birth in 1946, but suddenly it was obvious that something was happening.

“Oh my God, not my son,” Paul recalled his mother saying.

In accordance with the doctor’s recommendations, he spent the following few days recuperating in bed, but the boy clearly had polio and was not improving. Less than a week after he first felt severely ill, he lost his ability to swallow, breathe, or grasp anything in his hands.

When his parents eventually arrived at the hospital, he joined numerous other kids who were suffering from same symptoms.

Before polio immunizations were available, the virus incapacitated more than 15,000 individuals. Even when an infected individual shows no symptoms of polio, it can still spread.

Fatigue, fever, stiffness, muscular discomfort, and vomiting are some of the signs and symptoms of polio. Polio can, in rarer instances, also result in paralysis and death.