Paul Richard Alexander

Paul Richard Alexander was born in Dallas, Texas. In 1952, during the worst polio epidemic in US history, six-year-old Paul contracted paralytic polio, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe independently. Doctors placed him inside a 600-pound negative pressure ventilator known as an iron lung, where he spent the remaining 72 years of his life.

Refusing to let physical confinement limit his mind, Alexander taught himself "frog breathing" (glossopharyngeal breathing), allowing him to leave the canister for short periods. He graduated from high school with honors, earned a bachelor's degree and a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, and was admitted to the Texas bar. He practiced family law and civil litigation for decades, appearing in courtroom proceedings in a modified wheelchair. In 2020, typing with a plastic wand held in his mouth, Alexander published his memoir, Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung, and later shared his daily life on TikTok, inspiring millions of people worldwide with his indomitable spirit.