I opened my eyes. It was bright, must be in the afternoon. I was glad it wasn’t night, the nights were confusing and scary to me. It was the pain that woke me, it was always the pain. It was relentless; moving from terrible to excruciating. The nurses were going in and out as my mom and wife sat talking while playing with my new 5-month-old son Theo. My mouth was so dry it felt like it was cracking. I hadn’t had water in weeks but it felt like an eternity. Time had become a strange concept to me, I was not sure the day or month. I was not even sure how long I had been there, but it seemed like eternity. The pain became more intense so I jarred my head up and down trying to get someone’s attention not that there was anything they could do. I wanted to scream out but I had long lost my ability to speak or been able to do anything else on my own. Tubes ran in and out of my body. My body had lost the ability to keep itself alive. I was paralyzed from head to toe. As if being paralyzed wasn’t enough, the pain was overwhelming, every inch of my body suffered. My skin felt like it was on fire, a 24-hour burn. The weight of my own body felt like it was crushing my bones. I lay naked in the bed, because even the weight of a light sheet was too much to bear. Little did I know the extent of my disease – Guillain Barre Syndrome.
I was not always like this, in fact just weeks before I had everything going for me. We had just come from the PGA tour from Napa, California on a business trip and had to rush back to get go to my friend’s wedding. I had to also get back to meet with my landscapers to plant 30 trees on top of 300,000 cubic feet of dirt to hide my neighbor’s newest project from view; an airplane hangar sized structure.
More of his story at the link.
I had a dear friend who developed this shortly after taking a flu shot. She died in the hospital. Also, she was healthy and led an active lifestyle prior to the shot.
Great story until the end when they guy writes that his cash flow asset plan by Aj Oswald kept his family finances afloat during his extended illness..then boom, THE END. Now maybe the story was true but it lost its power for me...like Ralphie discovering that the Little orphan Annie secret code decoded into a “crummy” commercial for Ovaltine(Reference the Christmas Story).