Adrian Voller
I played three hard sets of tennis on Thursday 5 July 1990 against a man of 26 (half my age), felt my legs tingling that evening, but thought no more about it. By the following Monday, it was much worse, and my wife insisted I go to the doctor that morning. He referred me to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital where I was detained overnight for examination. The next morning, I was completely paralyzed except for my eyelids and remained so for ten weeks with GBS. I left the hospital in a wheelchair on 15 June 1991, having been advised by a doctor not to try to learn to walk again because “you are too badly damaged and therefore you will never succeed. Try to remain positive and use an electric wheelchair.” Nevertheless, I was determined to recover as far as possible, so for the next four years my wife and a kindly carer helped me learn to walk again, and in 1998 I managed 6 ½ miles through the New Forest, England on an organized church walk. I found the UK and US GBS websites on the Internet and volunteered as a helper on each site because I noticed people were being discharged from hospitals with no real idea how to cope with GBS for the remainder of their lives.
I have made many virtual friends worldwide over the years, some of whom I am still in contact with. Over the years I have been surprised how many GBS patients on both sides of the Atlantic have (like me) been advised by their doctors that recovery was impossible, and therefore one must get used to it and try to make the best of a bad situation. Several have sadly believed what they have been told and never made any effort to improve. When I learned to walk again, I volunteered for a year to return to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital whenever they had a GBS patient to try to instill in that person a determination to succeed in recovery, no matter how long it took. The GBS attack in 1990 left me without the use of my hands despite all my efforts, but to this day I am still able to walk without any aids, anno domini is reducing my endurance at the age of 85 years. My message to anyone out there with problems of any kind that show a reasonable possibility of being resolved is: never give up, never, never give up.
