By the time our vacation ended, and we returned home, I could barely walk. My legs felt like I had weights attached to them and I had throbbing, burning pain radiating from my knees to my feet. I had what felt like an electric shock that would surge through my shins, at its worst it was every 8 seconds (I laid awake one night and counted. Things you do when you can’t sleep…). On Sunday evening, as I was changing out of my clothes and getting ready for bed, I noticed the numbness had spread to my stomach and up to my right shoulder. I knew I needed to call the doctor first thing in the morning. I told my husband, and his hope was they would go ahead and give me vitamin injections to speed up the process of getting my bloodwork back to normal, hopefully eliminating my symptoms.

I laid awake most of the night, constantly touching the numb areas of my body, waiting for sensation to come back. By the time I called the doctor’s office the next morning, I was in full panic mode. The numbness had spread down my right arm and into my hand. Now, numb feet are awful, but a numb hand? A numb dominate hand? Have mercy. I dropped just about anything I tried to pick up, and the weakness made it difficult to do almost any task. I constantly opened and closed my hand, trying to get it to “wake up”. I was scheduled for 4:00 pm at the doctor’s office, so I spent the day worried and anxious. What if it keeps spreading? What is happening to me? Fear and anxiety are nasty things, especially when you can do nothing but wait. That afternoon I threw on a hat (washing and drying my hair was not going to happen), dropped the kids at my parent’s house and headed to the doctor’s office.

The doctor I had seen previously wasn’t in that day, so I was seeing a physician’s assistant. Once in the exam room, I started filling her in on my last visit, and what had been happening since. When I told her about the spreading of the numbness, her face changed. I still remember feeling lightheaded when I noticed that. No matter what I read online, and no matter what diagnosis I gave (or didn’t give) myself, having a medical professional react that way when talking about your symptoms is scary as hell. She told me she wanted to get a neurologist referral as soon as possible because she was concerned it might be Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I had read a little about that in my Google medical studies the last few weeks, and I remembered seeing how it could potentially cause paralysis and difficulty breathing. Since my numbness was moving upward, my fear at that exact moment was I would soon not be able to breathe. Oh, and let me put this out there to add fuel to the fire…I have extreme anxiety that comes with panic attacks. I was a hot mess.

I was in a daze when I went to the checkout window. The receptionist let me know that they were faxing over a referral to a neurologist, but she had a question for the physician’s assistant that I saw. While I stood in the hallway, I listened to the exchange, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. When she returned, she told me to grab a seat in the waiting room because they needed to confirm some information and it would take a few minutes. I sat in the empty waiting area. It was nearing the end of the workday and it looked like I was the last patient. The receptionist came around the corner and handed me a post-it note. On it was the name of a neurologist and a street address. She told me to go straight there. Wait, what? I knew there was no way I heard her correctly. It was almost 5:00 pm and the office was in Raleigh, almost a 30-minute drive from where I was. Surely, they closed in just a few minutes. I remember saying, “right now?” She told me they would be waiting for me. The physician’s assistant had called the office and talked to them about my symptoms, and they wanted me asap. And you think I was a hot mess earlier.

I remember walking through the parking lot and not being able to catch my breath. I started gasping for air and crying at the same time. I’m guessing it was some serious ugly crying. When I got to my car, I called my husband. I blurted out everything that had happened between sobs. He told me to come to his job site right away, and he would drive to the neurologist. I hung up with him and called my mom. I sobbed through the conversation letting her know what was happening. As a parent, I can’t imagine how she felt, or my dad when she relayed the information to him. I don’t recall exactly what she said to me, but one thing I clearly remember from the conversation was that her voice remained quiet and calm. I’m sure it was to keep the kids from hearing, since they were at her house, but thinking back to it now, I’m guessing she was as scared as I was. As I drove out of the parking lot, I noticed the sun was gone and the weather was taking a turn for the worse.

When I pulled up to my husband’s job site, he took over driving and we headed to Raleigh. Wouldn’t you know it, a massive thunderstorm was rolling into the area, and we were driving directly into it. The sky darkened and the wind picked up. By the time we were halfway into the trip, it was raining so hard anything we might have said would have been impossible to hear. That wasn’t an issue though, because I had absolutely no words. My mind was going a mile a minute. All the ‘what ifs’ were drowning me. My husband concentrated on driving and squeezed my hand the whole way, much like he did many years before on the way to the hospital when I was in labor with our son. Funny, that day the sun was out and the trip to Raleigh was a quick one. We talked and laughed (between contractions, of course) and shared our excitement for what was to come. This time, the heavens were screaming and throwing a fit, we were silent, and the drive seemed to take a lifetime. How appropriate.