Almost 58,000 people, primarily children, contracted the virus in the U.S in 1952. Sadly, 3,145 of them died.

“As far as you can see, rows and rows of iron lungs. Full of children,” he said, according to The Guardian.

While some may have given up their will to live, it only fueled Paul’s will.

He would hear doctors say, ”He’s going to die today” or “He shouldn’t be alive” whenever they passed by him, and he wanted to prove them wrong.

And that’s exactly what he did!

In 1954 he was discharged from the hospital, but he quickly learned his life was drastically different than before.

“People didn’t like me very much back then,” he said during a video interview in 2021. “I felt like they were uncomfortable around me.”