Running for a cause
A Levin woman is running her way back from a rare illness and raising money and awareness along the road.
Lini Laike Moes, 20, has her sights set on running a halfmarathon less than a year after being hospitalised by GuillainBarre´ syndrome (GBS).
During her training she is raising funds and awareness for the GBS support group and the Mental Health Foundation.
Moes said she had just moved back to Horowhenua last May, after working and living in Waikato, when she started feeling pins and needles in her feet.
Over the next five or six days she couldn’t sleep and then had trouble trying to get off the couch, and she was admitted to hospital where she spent the next seven weeks.
Those seven weeks were split between Palmerston North Hospital, including time in ICU because of respiratory issues, and the Star 4 ward in Levin.
She was diagnosed with GBS, a rare illness where the immune system attacked the nerves.
While the recovery rate for GBS was pretty good, especially for young people, it was still scary.
‘‘There was probably a week or two where I didn’t really know if I was going to walk.
‘‘We talked about wheelchair options, I had people visit that had had it, and they spent two years plus in a wheelchair before they could even start to learn to walk again.’’
Moes had suffered quite bad nerve damage in her hands and feet, which she said just took time to heal.
She was back living and working in Horowhenua and had started training for a half-marathon.
Before she was diagnosed with GBS her goal was to run the Queenstown marathon, but she was now aiming to run the halfmarathon, which had been postponed until March 19, 2022 because of Covid-19.
She wanted to do something for GBS, but also for the Mental Health Foundation as her perspective on mental health had changed as a result of her illness.
It wasn’t until she got out of hospital and did a one-month course in agriculture contracting in Masterton, the first time she had been alone since being in hospital, that she questioned her mental health.
‘‘I sort of thought, ‘man I wonder if I’m OK after all that,’ and I realised I was not all good, I was not OK. You just have to get used to the new normal because you aren’t the same person after that, physically but also mentally, you are not the same.
‘‘I had always thought in regards to mental health you just have to cheer up, you know. I had never really understood because I had just never experienced it, and I think a lot of people are probably in the same boat.’’
She said when you’re sick you think, ‘‘I’ll be happy when I can walk, or I’ll be happy when I can do this,’’ and yourmind was trained to not be present.
That would get you through that time, but it wasn’t a good mentality to have once you were out of hospital, she said.
Moes was raising money on Givealittle, and any money raised would be split between the Guillain-Barre´ syndrome and CIDP Support Group New Zealand, and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.