Amazing recovery of the dancer so paralysed that she could not speak
THE creeping paralysis began in Emily Thompson’s hands and feet and eventually became so complete that she could not speak or move her eyelids.
But the former dancer has astonished doctors by recovering in weeks from a rare medical condition which left her helpless and in intensive care.
Miss Thompson, 20, was diagnosed with the disorder GuillainBarré syndrome, which affects one in 50,000 people and attacks the lining of the nerves. It is so serious that one in five patients never make a full recovery.
Her family were devastated when she developed pneumonia and spent five weeks on a ventilator and a further two weeks in intensive care.
But this week, after a total of only ten weeks in hospital, Miss Thompson was able to take her first two steps.
‘Being unable to move was terrify-
‘Make a full recovery’
ing,’ she said. ‘I thought I could not take any more. I wanted to die.
‘But after five weeks the feeling started to return to my face, and slowly I was able to speak again.
‘I am starting to take my first steps, and doctors say I will make a full recovery. To say I am relieved would be an understatement.’
Miss Thompson, of Newton Hall, near Durham, first realised something was wrong in August, when she developed a numb feeling in her hands and feet.
A few days later she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome and taken into hospital.
Her family, including her mother Carolyn, 51, father David, 49, sister Victoria, 29, and brother Michael, 27, kept a bedside vigil.
Soon Miss Thompson, who is studying to become a social worker at Sunderland University, could not move a single part of her body. She went into a dream- like state for ten days, having hallucinations that she was a Big Brother contestant and that her father had won the lottery. After seven weeks in intensive care, Miss Thompson’s condition improved and she began to regain feeling in her body.
She said: ‘I just wanted to cry when I started to move. It was so overwhelming because I thought it was never going to happen.’ Guillain-Barré syndrome occurs when the immune system attacks the nerves. Most patients develop it shortly after having a viral or bacterial infection. Treatments target the antibodies in the blood that are attacking the nerves.