In February, 1994, about 7:30 A.M., while brushing my teeth, I dropped my
tooth brush and when I tried to pick it up and continue brushing, I noticed
that I was having difficulty holding the DARN thing. By the time I was thru,
I felt generally weak and managed to put on my clothes. I decided to go sit
in the den and finish my coffee and kinda see if I could tell what was wrong
with me. I found that I then could not pick up the coffee cup, let alone lift
it to my mouth.
I called my daughter and asked her to bring me the portable phone, it seemed
to stay in her room for some reason. I then found that I could not even lift
the phone up. I told her to call her Mom at work, it was my late shift to see
the daughter off to the school bus, and my wife had gone to work already.
Dutifully, she came home and took me to the ER at the closest hospital. I
though it might be a heart attack or something like that, I am at that age, ya
know.
The ER staff and doctors could not tell what was going wrong with me or the
cause of it. My arm(oops, I forgot, I was born without my left arm from just
below the elbow on the left) seemed to regain its strength and I felt great.
I never had any back pain at any time.
That afternoon-evening late, I noticed I was limping with my left leg for some
reason and began to have a hard time urinating. The next morning I was about
the same, but my leg was getting weaker and I began to feel like a belt was
tightly drawn around my waist.
That next night, I awoke about 3:00 A.M. with this most gauwd awful pain in my
right arm below the elbow and the tip of my nub on the left and my sternum-mid
chest line. I managed to call the nurse, and I was prescribed darvoset my the
neuro that was on my case and I went back to sleep.
I awoke about 6:30 A.M. and could not move my legs any at all and needed to
urinate like a race horse, but couldn't, I just hurt in my lower abdomen and
was having a bit of difficulty breathing. I had no other pains, nor back pain
at all. I rang the nurse and asked him to call my wife and tell her to come
to the hospital ASAP, that I was not doing so great.
When she arrived, I was in the ICU by then, and the neuro was scratching his
head in a quandary as to what was going on with me. The CAT and MRI's the day
before only showed two small constellations in my brain and nothing else, and
they were probably from old head injuries---a baseball between the eyes and a
fall when I was a kid.
Wife showed up and did not seem too happy with what was going on. She called
heart specialist she know in the Med. Center, and he recommended a neuro
surgeon he know to look at me. He was there in an hour--wow that was fast.
He diagnosed me as having TM within fifteen minutes, and whispered to my wife
to get me out of that one-horse hospital and down to the Med. Center where
they would know what to do.
After three weeks in Intensive care there, having steroids pumped into me at
the rate of 1500 units a day and having plasma or hemo - pharesis once a day
for six days, I had no improvement at all......But it did not get any worse,
and my breathing seemed to get easier, but up to full steam. My new neuro
said that I should be waking with the aid of a walker in about six to eight
weeks(he was ever so wrong--I am not walking this day). I spent three more
days in a ward unit, then I was transferred to the rehab hospital where I
stayed for sixty days.
Needless-to-say, upon release from rehab, I was a para at T3/4 beginning at
T1., and had no use of either leg or my waist-torso, and could only move my
right big toe ever so slightly, on occasion.
Let's see, I was fifty-two then. My wife stuck it out with me as well as my
stepdaughter.
I tried two cases after TM, but was not impressed with the accessibility of
the court houses around here and did not like to cath indwelling, and my
bowels seemed to get a bit less controllable---I have had to train myself via
diet---so I retired.
I use a Quickie P300 power chair with six inch wheels. One arm and a manual
drive just does not do the trick for me.
I can now move my right leg, ankle and foot-toes. My left I can move one toe
and the ankle now and then and my torso seems to have returned somewhat, but
mostly on the right side so I look like a couissaant.
RCookHook(AT)AOL.COM
Bob Cook
Houston, Texas