Remyelination

It started a few weeks ago. I had some odd pains in my legs and a tendency to walk like a drunk, falling off to one side or the other. I knew it could be something serious when I fell in the shower, almost taking the glass door down with me. The next day, after I fell against the door to our bedroom slamming the knob into the wall and leaving a gaping hole, my wife and I agreed that I had to see the doctor about this. When I described what I was experiencing, my doctor said, “Get to an emergency room, now!”

After several hours with several doctors and technicians, after MRI’s of my head, hips and legs, after some fiendish electrical shock tests of neural pathways and muscles and after having fluid drawn from my spine, the verdict came to this: Guillain-Barre’ Syndrome.

What the hell is that? I asked. The doctor then wrote out what “that” is. It is “acute demyelinating poly-neuropathy”.

Thank you doctor! So I turned to the sources I know best–on the internet.

One of the questions asked by the doctors was, “have you had any contact with a viral or bacterial infection?” Well, I certainly had. A couple of weeks before my hospitalization I had a severe stomach and diarrhea episode. One factoid from my internet search yielded this: campylobactor is a food borne pathogen that can cause mild to severe diarrhea and fever in humans. It can also cause a secondary, neurological condition known as Guillain-Barre’ Syndrome! Aha! Where does this campy-something come from? Well to put it in somewhat earthy terms, it's commonly found in animal poop.

Good grief! Now my wife is a careful food preparer and I wash my hands many times a day, so how could some I get some (excuse me) crap into my system? A mystery, believe me.

But how does an infection turn one’s body against itself? Think a minute. How do we protect ourselves from, say, flu? Well, that’s simple. We get a shot. The shot contains flu bugs that have been rendered fairly harmless. What it does is to place this foreign stuff in our bodies which alarms the immune system. In effect a flu shot sets off a counterattack by the bodies defense, by calling up the reserves. In my case the reserves were called out to battle whatever was causing my digestive upset.

Interestingly, GBS has been known to be set off by getting a flu shot. The sad fact is that the immune system, the white blood cells, having been munching on the primary cause, start to strip the myelin sheath on the peripheral nerve fibers, sort of an immune system gone wild. That's where the demyelination comes in. And that is what causes the muscles to which the nerves connect to become, well, paralyzed. And that is why I walked like a drunk and still do.

The cure? In my case I had five days where I had several hours connected to an I-V dripping immune globulins into my veins. Now I have physical therapy to keep my leg muscles in tone for the time when the nerves have remyelinated. I'm lucky that it is only my legs that are involved.
It could be worse. Much worse.

So--that is why I've started this blog. Something to do while I'm remyelinating.