Polio (1) | Im Sommer kam die Angst

Als Paul Alexander an einem warmen, regnerischen Nachmittag im Juli
1952 ins Haus gelaufen kam und klagte, er fühle sich nicht wohl,
erfasste seine Mutter sofort die Angst: War ihr 6-jähriger Sohn an
der Kinderlähmung erkrankt? Tatsächlich hatte ihn das Polio-Virus
erwischt. In der ersten Folge einer Serie über diesen Erreger,
erzählt der heute 76-Jährige über sein Leben mit der Krankheit. Mit
dem Arzt Paul Offit spricht das Team über die Bedeutung die das
Virus damals für die Menschen hatte. One of the Last People to Live
in an Iron Lung Is a Longhorn Paul R. Alexander: Three Minutes for
a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung The man in the iron lung Der Podcast
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Recherchen für diesen Beitrag wurden von der Riff freie Medien
gGmbH aus Mitteln der Klaus Tschira Stiftung gefördert. Transkript
Zitate Paul Alexander Paul Alexander 1 I was playing outside as a
six year old one rainy day. I felt a little bit bad. I ran to the
house. I was going to tell mama I didn’t feel good. She was mopping
the kitchen and I was playing in the mud barefooted which I usually
did. I came in the backdoor to the kitchen where mum was mopping
and she turned and looked at me and said what was wrong my son. “I
don’t feel very good at all“ and she said, “Oh no, God, please“,
because she knew it was polio. Paul Alexander 2 So mum put me to
bed and as each day passed I would loose something. First of all my
feet and legs would go, eventually my arms, my hands, I couldn’t
move them, and then I couldn’t sit up. I got sicker. Fever shot
through the ceiling. I got a high fever. My back hurt. I was in a
lot of pain. It took six days for me to loose all my abilities. I
couldn’t move at all. Paul Alexander 3 Some hours passed and again
the doctor came through and examined me I guess for his final
report. For some reason he picked me up in his arms, ran upstairs
with me and put me in the iron lung in which I have been ever
since. Paul Alexander 4 I regained my conciousness. I couldn’t
talk. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t swallow. It took everything,
absolutely everything. So that was the beginning. I stayed at the
hospital over 18 months…. and I couldn’t do anything but lay there
which I did very well. ...It was the worst experience you could
possibly imagine. There were big wards, big rooms that had dozens
of iron lungs all with children and at first I couldn’t see them. I
didn’t know where I was, what was going on because I couldn’t move
and you know I went from playing in my house to total paralysis,
inability to breathe and I was trapped in something I had no idea
what it was. So that’s were I lived. It was hell, awful. Paul
Alexander 5 They would take scissors and try and cut my fingernails
so they cut my fingers. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t cry. I
couldn’t yell. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do anything. I had to
let them cut me and bleed all over. That was horrible, absolute
torture. Paul Alexander 6 I didn’t have really any reason to live
in that environment. So it was almost Christmas. Mum came in and
said doctor we want to take him home. The doctor said you might as
well because he is not going to live more than a couple of days. He
won’t see Christmas. They got a generator and they put an iron lung
and the generator in a truck and they drove me home. When I got
there (laughs) my brother came to my little tent. I was in a
plastic tent that covered …