Fri 15 Dec 2017 Transverse Myelitis one year later

A week or so before the injury: unable to eat and in great pain.

I am writing this with my eyes full of tears as I remember the dreadful events that happened one year ago today.
Elise had been horribly sick for several months before and was deteriorating.  Shannon had contacted the hospital several times and the response was that Elise seemed to be on track and to wait it out.
Her back was in great pain and nothing we could do would relieve it. Lots of massage was our only avenue.
By the 13th and 14th walking became too painful other than going from room to room. Elise then noticed on the 14th that she hadn't urinated for some time and wondered if she was dehydrated.
We spent the evening together by ourselves as Shannon and the others decided to go to the beach for a distraction as we were so worried. Elise was in so much pain that she couldn't concentrate on the comedy show I put on TV to try and cheer ourselves up with. I then watched her walk into her bedroom seeing how her gait had deteriorated, little guessing that it would be the last time walk.

At about 11:30 she called me from her room waking me. She was on the floor unable to get up. I was sleepy and tried to comfort her and hauled her back to bed. I went back to sleep deeply troubled.
At 2:30 she again woke me up again, she was on the floor unable to move her legs. I carried her to the toilet and when she still couldn't urinate I decided to go to Emergency.
I carried her body and dragged her completely floppy legs along behind from the car to the Emergency Admission area.
The hospital people were great, got MRI's and snapped into action.

In between all the medical things that were happening I took a few photographs to record the event.
I then had a brainwave and decided to get Elise to pull a face, just for a joke, to show everyone how ill she felt. I got her to hang her tongue out. Unfortunately the joke ended up in poor taste as she was really too ill to pull a good "sick face", and the shot was no good.

A joke in poor taste: her tongue hanging out to show how "sick" she is

 I had no idea how sick she was because when you go to hospital they fix you, right?

 By about 9:00am a bundle of specialist came into the room and one of them was saying how Elise would need Physiotherapy, Occupational Health, and psychologists. With that I knew something big was happening but really had no idea why they would be talking about such things.
Little did I realise that her spine was still being attacked and she had lost all leg, bladder and bowel control. The attack was still moving up her spinal cord and was affecting her hands, arms and breathing.
The breathing was a real worry to the doctors and they were on high alert. I was blissfully unaware.

The rest for the saga is well documented in the blog and as I write this Elise is at the hospital for her Physio and psychology appointments.