I just joined this forum and read the post by coldcuppatea entitled '21 years later'. I had to reply. It was strange how similar his/her experience was to mine.
It was 23 years ago for me. 1993. I was 42 years old. I woke up and my hands were tingling. I went to work thinking I had just slept on them but they didn't get better. I was an electrician. I climbed a ladder with a small motor on my shoulder and about half way up my legs went out from under me. I was able to hold on and my leg strength came back. I finished the job but then went to my doctor. He ran a few tests on my reflexes and said he suspected Guillain Barre. He sent me home and said if I had any more symptoms to call him immediately. That evening I was walking across the living room and my legs went out again. I fell on top of my wife. We called the doctor and he instructed me to go immediately to OSU hospital ER. My wife drove (about 50 miles) and by the time we got to the hospital I had to have a wheelchair to get from the car to ER. While signing in at the ER my head fell over and I was paralyzed. They first suspected Belles Palsy. They did the spinal and confirmed GB. They started me on plasmapheresis after a couple of days. I'm sure others have had this but plasmapheresis is where they took blood out of one arm, run it through a centrifuge, separated the plasma, replaced it with new plasma and reinserted it in my other arm. Each time I had this done they would cycle my entire blood volume 1.5 times. The course of this was 7 of these treatments over about 10 days. The doctors said they were amazed that my recovery was so fast. I went home for about 3 days and relapsed. I had to do it all again. They diagnosed me with Chronic Guillain Barre. I got through the second set of treatments and have been free of it ever since. Don't get me wrong. This just stopped the Guillain Barre. I had lost a tremendous amount of weight and had to go through a lot of PT to get any movement back. I remember being so proud of myself because I could lift a one pound weight over my head long after I got home. But I was back to work in about 3 months. Maybe a little early but I just felt I had to get back into a routine.
Like coldcuppatea said in his/her post, I still to this day have chronic fatigue. And like coldcuppatea I'm hoping someone might post a remedy for it. My family physicians don't even seem to relate it to the GB. If anyone out there has had this chronic fatigue and has anything that helps please post.