CLOSE CALL
A sore throat left Emily Mcdonald, 22, from Highburton, paralysed from the neck down…
Sipping on a glass of water, I winced in pain.
I’d just come home from the GP, where I’d been diagnosed with tonsillitis, and the pain in my throat was just so unbearable.
‘You’ll feel better soon, love,’ my mum said, gently placing a blanket over me.
But a month passed, and I still couldn’t shake off the tonsillitis.
I was signed off work and told to rest, but then I started getting painful pins and needles in my hands and feet.
‘It’s just part of the illness,’ the doctor reassured me when I went back. At home, I lay on the sofa and could barely move my head.
My whole body ached. By the following night, I was too weak to climb upstairs to go to bed. My dad had to bring my mattress downstairs into the living room. But at 1am, I woke up needing the toilet, and I realised that I couldn’t move at all.
Scared, I rang Mum’s phone right away. ‘Can you come downstairs and help me?’ I asked. She and Dad turned on the light and looked at me with expressions of horror. ‘I think we need to call an ambulance,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t want to scare you, but the right side of your face has dropped. You may be having a stroke.’ As we waited for the ambulance, I was unable to walk, and was slowly losing my ability to talk, too. At the hospital, doctors and neurologists carried out numerous tests to find out what was wrong. Eventually I was diagnosed with Guillain-barré syndrome (GBS), a rapid-onset muscle weakness caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system. Within just two
days, my lung had deflated and I couldn’t breathe on my own, so I was transferred to the intensive care unit where they hooked me up to a life support machine. I was so scared. I couldn’t really hear what was happening and my vision was blurry.
For a few weeks it was touch and go, and then I became paralysed from the neck down.
Doctors warned I may never walk again.
Mum held my hand and I knew from the look on her face that she thought I was going to die.
For 10 months, I battled the illness and then my immune system began to fight it off.
As my health slowly improved, I was able to reach little milestones.
Now, after all this time, I’m managing to walk completely unaided and I’m back at work at our family pub.
I love every day thanks to a new respect for the things that I used to take for granted.