This past summer, I had major back surgery, experienced runaway post-operative pain, and arose nine days after returning home with pins and needles in my hands and feet. Four days later, I could no longer stand, and I was readmitted to hospital. Weakening precipitously, I mysteriously couldn’t lift my left arm above my shoulder, and had to be hauled on and off a bedside commode. No one knew what was wrong with me. After multiple MRIs confirmed that the back surgery had been flawless, the surgical team decided my infirmity was psychosomatic. I was discharged as insane. Weeks later, having been wasting away in a gruesome, Cuckoo’s Nest care home, I returned to the hospital by ambulance for a last neurological test. Desperate for a diagnosis of any sort, I failed to appreciate what a dreadful diagnosis that test delivered: Guillain-Barré syndrome.
GBS is a rare autoimmune disorder, whereby the body attacks its own nervous system and the musculature dissolves. The syndrome is occasionally triggered by surgery. GBS has been reported as a potential side effect of the Covid vaccines. Whether being triple vaccinated made me more susceptible I’ll never know.
This obscure, perverse malfunction could have been specifically designed to annihilate Lionel Shriver, 68. I’m a writer and, for months, neuropathic hands, at once numb and agonizing, made it impossible to type. I’ve always been vain about my fitness, too. While I’ll never regret a minute spent on the tennis court, I’ve lavished whole cumulative years of my life on repetitive rituals that were stupefyingly dull—suddenly all for nothing. I went from sets of 500 sit-ups to being unable to do one. GBS melted the biceps from my two regular 70/60 sets of push-ups into wrinkly bingo wings. My calf muscles from countless thousands of burpees and mountain climbers vanished—leaving droops of crenulated skin as souvenirs. At first, I could only lift a cup of coffee using both hands. I couldn’t turn over in bed. I’ve had to learn to stand and then to walk, slowly, tremulously, from scratch.