How does an American survive, who is unexpectedly paralyzed after a marathon
'31.05.2018'
Source: The Daily Mail
30-year-old Marie Sander from Lindenhurst, New York, with her husband Joe decided to take part in the New York half-marathon in April 2016, and ran to the finish line, but after a few days she could not walk.
Marie felt weakness for several weeks before the marathon, but blamed it on her employment at work and decided not to attach importance to her condition, writes The Daily Mail... A week after the marathon, she found that she could not move normally, and in a couple of days the woman was paralyzed - the entire lower half of her body was taken away and even her face was partially immobilized.
Doctors diagnosed Julian-Barré syndrome, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system, paralyzing parts of it, and sometimes the entire body. As a rule, the syndrome is preceded by an infectious disease - ARVI or intestinal flu, but Sander did not tolerate anything like this. Probably, the load during the marathon aggravated the processes that by that time were already taking place in the woman's body.
In a matter of days, the disease completely subdued the young woman - she could not perform the simplest tasks, she was not even able to eat on her own. She spent about a month in two different hospitals, receiving medications and physiotherapy, as well as intravenous immunoglobulin - a method using the blood of donors who have healthy antibodies to block pathological antibodies that attack the immune system and nerves of a sick person.
Sander again has to learn to walk - to do this, she spends three hours every day with a physiotherapist, performs exercises to strengthen muscles, learns to climb stairs, move on a treadmill, and even pedal an exercise bike. As Marie herself admits, her task does not include brisk walking, it is important to walk in general.
After the first symptoms, the patient’s condition usually worsens in about two weeks. The recovery period can last from several weeks to several years, and about 30% of all patients have problems with movement after three years. It took Sander about six weeks to walk again without help. It was possible to achieve this result after hard training and thanks to the efforts of the woman herself. Two years later, Marie returned to jogging again.
