TEARS filled Felicity Nivison’s eyes as she stood outside Tamworth Hospital in the afternoon sun.
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It’s 137 days since the Walcha woman was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, within 36 hours paralysis took over her body from her feet to her eyes.
“I haven’t been back, it’s amazing really to think I’d have six to twelve months on a ventilator if I made it – so I feel pretty lucky,” she said.
“I just can’t thank them enough honestly, I had two nurses looking after me 24 hours a day and they didn’t leave my side.”
Presenting to her doctor on February 7 complaining of tingling in her feet and hands, Ms Nivison had no idea how serious her symptoms would become.
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Overnight she was rushed to Tamworth Hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit, where she remembers desperately trying to tell her family what needed to be done at work before the paralysis took her ability to speak.
Guillain-Barré is an auto-immune disease where the body’s immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system.
Ms Nivison’s daughter Zoe was by her mother’s side when she walked into the ICU for the first time – without crutches.
“We’d pretty much written off this year with mum, doctors told us it could take that long for her to recover,” she said.
“So it’s pretty amazing.”
Guillain-Barré sufferers can take up to two years to recover, the cause is unknown, and there is no cure.
ICU co-director Steve Doherty was there the day Ms Nivison arrived in hospital, his own brother-in-law was the first person admitted to Westmead Hospital with the syndrome years earlier when he struggled to turn the key in the car.
“She got very weak very quickly – at that stage you don’t know how long it’s [recovery] going to take,” Dr Doherty said.
“It would be one of the longest patients we’ve had.
“In here you’re really seeing people at their lowest, so it’s really nice to see them with colour in their cheeks and walking, it’s lovely to see.”