GB

I remember seeing a joke in a comic when I was a boy. One character asked another, “If an ‘L’ sticker on the back of a car means ‘Learner,’ what does ‘GB’ stand for?” 

The answer was ‘Getting Better.’ Not very funny, not very memorable. Except it is, because for some reason I remember it.

Anyway, that’s the context for the title of this week’s post. Getting Better.

I’m getting better.

Those of you who read my previous post will know that I have landed myself with a thing called ‘Guillain-Barré Syndrome.’ (Note that GB can also refer to that… just in case you think I just throw these things together.) When I posted that last blog, two weeks ago, my GB (Guillain-Barré) was just on the verge of GB (Getting quite a bit Better). So I thought I’d better do a little update, for myself as much as for you, gentle reader.

A little over six weeks on from being admitted to hospital, I am pleased to report that I am back home again and walking, unaided, on my own two feet. I figured you’d be pleased to hear this… as I am.

I'll always say I was very lucky, because I was, but I pushed for it too. The medical advice was that it would take many months to get back to walking again and then the best part of a year to (hopefully) recover fully. In the six weeks it took me to get back to this stage, I have progressed through a sizeable list of moving devices and walking aids. These included, but were not restricted to, a wheelchair, sara stedy, standing support walking frame, gutter walker frame, regular walker frame, two crutches, two sticks, one stick and, um, no stick at all. That latter event happened quite recently. After a weekend of quietly practising with one stick, I was encouraged by my Physio to ‘just walk’ and, after a disbelieving few initial steps, that’s just what I did. And I’ve been continuing to do it ever since.

I think, somewhere in my head, I had equated the act of walking unaided with my being fully repaired. That is patently not the case. Although I can manage most things, albeit slowly and for a limited period of time, the 24/7 ‘electrical buzzing’ in my hands and feet is a constant reminder that the myelin sheath covering my nerve fibres is still largely stripped off and will need time to regenerate. In the meantime, I'm like a second rate Marvel Superhero. Let’s call me 'Minor but Constant Electrical Shock Man'. My Achilles Heel is that I can only inflict it on myself.

Although it was very far from glamorous, the strong feeling is that the most glamorous part of my repair/recovery is now over. My return to being fully ambulatory had elements of a Rocky training montage about it. I worked as hard as I could, pushed, was regimented, made faces, and finished with a gratuitous flourish. Then, wonder of wonders, I walked away. 

Now as I fumble with my shirt buttons and try to walk discreetly, the impressive part is clearly over. My mission now is to be patient, do what I need to do, and let the healing continue.

This patience part will not be my forte. But I mustn’t forget that hospitals were not my forte either. Nor were immobility or total dependency. But I learned, first how do them and then how to get past them. I will learn how to do this patience thing too.

One of the challenges may be for me not to forget how bad it got for a little while there. I have a tendency to deflect and create diversions around negative things. I belittle them to deal with them. But I sense that a key part of this patience thing may be the holding on to the memories of those scary early parts of this thing. The cool feel of the hospital floor tiles on my cheek. The scrunching discomfort and bleakness of the hoist.

I could easily trivialise what happened, particularly given my lucky speed of recovery to date.

But this was not a trivial thing.

Is not a trivial thing.

Patience? Let’s do it.