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Comment by whythre | Hacker News Reader

Remarkable man! Good on him for achieving all that. The part where he was able to learn how to breathe and leave the iron lung for short periods of time is particularly interesting. I wonder what he did on those outings…

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I've just been reading this longer article from 2020 which has a lot more about his life: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lu...

It says he went out with friends, saw movies, and even flew on planes while "frog-breathing", as he called it. He couldn't do it while unconscious so he still had to sleep in the lung.

> The technique had a technical name, “glossopharyngeal breathing”. You trap air in your mouth and throat cavity by flattening the tongue and opening the throat, as if you’re saying “ahh” for the doctor. With your mouth closed, the throat muscle pushes the air down past the vocal cords and into the lungs. Paul called it “frog-breathing”.

So, to state it in computing terms, this wasn't a fix for not being able to breathe, it was a workaround. But it seems to have worked really well: at 40, he was "able to spend most of his day outside the machine that still kept him alive".

That's incredibly interesting. I'm attempting what I believe to be the technique described at the moment. If I'm doing it correctly I can see why he nicknamed it 'frog-breathing.'

It sounds like scuba diving, having enough in the tank to go for dives in the outside world at a time before returning to sleep in the lung.

Advances in medicine made iron lungs obsolete by the 1960s, replaced by ventilators. But Alexander kept living in the cylinder because, he said, he was used to it.

If this is reported correctly, it would even have been an deliberate choice to not leave more often or entirely.

EDIT: This was seemingly not reported correctly, it seems he only depended on the iron lung while sleeping but could otherwise live without it.

Maybe his decision to keep using the lung was a smart one. After all 2020 + ventilators...

> I wonder what he did on those outings...

Contracting Covid, unfortunately. :(

No. Hadn't left the iron lung in 5 years.

Source: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/magazin/eiserne...

"Alexander, who lived in Dallas, Texas, was rushed to the hospital in late February after testing positive for Covid, according to his social media manager. He was released from the hospital but was struggling to eat and drink."

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paul-alexander-polio-su...

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