I embarked on such a journey on January 16, 2010. When the day started I was an ordinary happy little Grandmother. I was 58 years old and very healthy thank you for my age. The day seemed like any other day. I drove around town with my infant grandson in the back seat of my car. I noticed a slight numbness in my hands and feet but I just shook it off and kept going. There didn't seem to be anything to worry about.
I woke up that night and fell three times on the way to the bathroom. I couldn't walk, not knowing what was going on we called my son and he and my husband took me to the hospital.
Within days I was helpless, I couldn't use my hands or feet, before long I couldn't even roll over, speak, or scratch my own nose. I lay helpless, stricken by a nerve disease called Gillian Barre' syndrome. Gillian Barre' is caused by what they believe is a virus that attacks the "myelin"or the sheath that protects the nerves that carry the massages vital to our bodily functions. Gillian Barre' leaves your nerve endings stripped and exposed, it is a very painful disease. In fact it has brought me to a whole new understanding of what pain is.
In a few weeks they moved me to Methodist Hospital in Houston Texas to receive treatment for the disease. From there they sent me home again to die. My local Doctor told us later that when they took me out of the ambulance on my return from Houston he didn't think I'd live 24 hours. I was in a coma for about two weeks and woke up on a ventilator unable to do much of anything but open my eyes.
I lay for months, trapped in my own body, not knowing if I'd ever be free again. Worse than the pain was the loss of every trace of dignity that I ever had. To be totally dependent other people for even the most basic of bodily needs. To be diapered and bathed by strangers. To be unable to communicate the smallest thing to your family. Slowly I began to recover, I came home in a wheel chair. Then in time I progressed to a walker then to crutches and then now to a cane.
I was in a hospital bed for six months and I am very grateful for how far I have come. Yet much of the trauma still lives with me. I am thankful when I can get a glass of water by myself. I am thankful when I can eat a good meal or hold my granddaughter. When I bathe or go to the bathroom by myself. When I can stand and look someone in the eye. I am thankful for a hundred things in a hundred different ways every day.
Yet I cry much more easily now than I ever did. Little things get to me and old hurts still hang heavily over me. I can not just shrug my shoulders, smile, and say "all better now". I was reduced to nothing physically and there are still reminders every morning in the pain and numbness that greet me when I get out of bed every morning. It is not pity that I want, only to be allowed to heal and with healing I must acknowledge that I must deal on an emotional level with what has happened. I can not just ignore it and pretend that everything is fine.
I am not "done" with Gillian Barre' nor will I ever be, it has marked my life in a way that can never be erased. I thank God that He stood with me in my time of need. I couldn't have made it without Him yet there were places I traveled as I journeyed through the"valley of the shadow of death" where only He could accompany me.