Do y’all know who Paul Alexander was? He was an American who held the title of the longest time spent living in an iron lung. Paul, born in 1946, contracted polio when he was six. He survived (obviously) but was left quadriplegic and couldn’t breathe on his own. So they put him in an iron lung machine, which he has used to breathe up until his death today at age 78.

The dude was tough. During power outages, neighbors would have to come and pump the bellows of the machine manually. Paul taught himself how to consciously breathe and was able to spend some brief times outside of the iron lung. He earned a law degree. He wrote a memoir over the course of eight years, using a plastic stick or pen to tap out words on a keyboard.

A man named Brady Richards came to Paul’s rescue when, in 2015, his iron lung machine began to break down and he either needed a repair or a new machine. The machines were quite rare by that point, but Brady was able to rebuild a broken machine he had in his warehouse and gave it to Paul. He regularly visited and helped Paul from that point on.

It’s a super interesting story. Paul had been hospitalized COVID last month, but it is unknown if that was the ultimate cause of death.