Henry learns to walk again

As numbness spread through his limbs, Henry Lotter knew something was very wrong.

On 5 July, he started building a deck at his Redwood Valley property and felt fine. But after a shower on Sunday night, he thought he hadn’t dried off properly because the back of his legs felt cold. Then, he woke up at 2am with numb fingers.

He went back to sleep thinking he had slept on his arm and just had pins and needles. By 6am, his toes had pins and needles too.

When one of his feet was dragging at 10am, he drove to the doctor.

With medical staff not being able to see him until Wednesday, he went to the Emergency Department. But after myriad tests, the doctors couldn’t find a cause for his issues, and he was sent home.

That night he woke up. His arms felt icy.

He was back to the hospital and tests revealed he had suffered a heart attack. But, because he was put on blood thinners, they couldn’t do a lumbar puncture to help diagnose him.

Then he was seen by a doctor who had seen similar symptoms before, and she diagnosed him with Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS) - a rare disorder where the body’s immune system attacks the nerves. Only about 1 in 100,000 people are affected.

“By Tuesday afternoon I was paralysed,” Henry says. “It crept up my legs until I was left paralysed from the waist down.”

He and his wife Sarah were given the diagnosis and told that he would get worse until he plateaued, and then recovery would start. And that the heart attack was due to the syndrome.

Starting with weakness and tingling in extremities, GBS can eventually paralyse the whole body.

“The fear was how long was this going to take,” says Henry.

Sarah says he went downhill quickly. Every day she would drive into the hospital wondering what she would find when she got there.

“They tell you it will get worse until it doesn’t, but you don’t know where the bottom is.”

She says it was the scariest time of her life.

Henry couldn’t lift his phone or push the button to call a nurse. His face was numb and expressionless. He needed feeding and help with toileting and showering.

Because Henry was diagnosed early and started on plasma to calm his immune system down, the GBS didn’t progress as far as it does in some other patients. He plateaued after three weeks, and he moved to the recovery phase which included learning to walk again.

“I kept thinking that ‘I had done this for so many years so why couldn’t I walk?’”

Although he was told that walking again could be a 6-month journey, his progress was evident every day and less than a month later he walked out of the hospital.

It’s still not clear what caused his GBS, which can come about from things as diverse as food poisoning to the flu.

Henry credits his rapid recovery to the quick diagnosis, his faith and having been fit before he got ill.

It has been hard for Henry to accept he isn’t as strong and fast as he had been all his life. He was South African gymnastics champion in his teens, and later went on to serve in the special forces.

He has a home gym where he would do cross-fit each day. He’s now exercising every day and started back at work on Monday.

He says the journey has been life-changing.

“Smaller things mean more to me now.”