Stephanie is 28 when disaster strikes. She wakes up and looks at her foot, which has suddenly turned all purple. It turns out to be the start of a terrible period, in which she is in hospital for months and becomes addicted to medication. ,,I had the feeling that Chantal Janzen was watching me from the TV, I had gone that crazy.”
Stephanie remembers well how she goes to sleep after a hard day at her internship company. Unsuspectingly, she goes to bed until she wakes up after two days of non-stop sleep. Curious, she peers at her foot, which suddenly looks very different from normal. ,,My foot had suddenly turned completely purple and cold. I was shocked, I had never seen anything like it,” she says. Stephanie quickly hops down from her house on the third floor to go to the doctor. “It was really a question mark, the doctor didn’t know either.”
My foot had suddenly turned completely purple and cold. I was shocked, I had never seen anything like this
The pain soon gets worse. “At one point I didn’t feel anything on my foot anymore. Also, my left hand suddenly felt cold and my face started to sag.” Stephanie needs to go to the hospital, and right away. “I remember going down on my neighbor’s back. He put me in his car and we raced to the hospital. Then they put me on a bed. The doctors also saw that my foot was purple and my toes were swollen.”
Lose all your freedom in one go
In the hospital, the doctors immediately start investigating. “They had never experienced anything like this before. At first they thought it was something neurological, so they all did tests. Ultrasounds, MRI scans, CT scans, everything. In the meantime I felt very drowsy and drowsy. I couldn’t understand what was going on, started asking myself all kinds of questions. How is my internship going now? How is my child? It was very lonely, all they do is stuff you with medication. You can’t move anything, you lose all your freedom at once.” The pain that once started in her foot quickly spreads to the rest of her body. Stephanie is paralyzed in both legs, left arm and face.
Stephanie stays in the hospital for 2.5 months, while she sees how the situation especially affects her 7-year-old son. “He was very sad. He didn’t understand what was going on. The day I got sick I sent him to the nanny. Then he had to cry. He said, “But Mom, I want to stay.” He still doesn’t feel like he could have prevented the paralysis had he stayed with me, he’s still a little mad at himself. And you don’t want that, you don’t want a 7-year-old kid to be mad at himself.”
Back to hospital by ambulance
In between, Stephanie goes home once, but then the situation only gets worse. ,,I was at home on the phone and suddenly had an attack. My tube feeding fell out of my nose and I fell to the floor. Meanwhile, the food flew in all directions. The ambulance came, but I still lived on the third floor. Then the people from the ambulance dragged me down with some kind of boat. It was so scary because I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. You can still think, you want to scream, but you can’t. That’s so frustrating.”
You want to scream, but you can’t. That’s so frustrating
She then returns to the hospital, which she leaves a few months later. “They got frustrated there because they couldn’t figure out what it was. It would be something neurological or psychological, that’s all they knew. I also kept a bed occupied, so I had to leave the hospital.” In the meantime, some paralysis has partially disappeared, but Stephanie, for example, still can’t walk.
Crazy about the medication
The drama really begins for Stephanie when she leaves the hospital. “I had to find a new home and create a whole new life for myself and my child. Because I became so obsessed with the new life I wanted to achieve, I went on a lot of medication to stay active. I used 1 liter of Ritalin to stay awake for 5 days so I could work on my life and practice with videos on YouTube to get my arms and legs moving again. The medication became an addiction. I felt like I couldn’t live without it.”
The medication became an addiction. I felt like I couldn’t live without
The more medication Stephanie takes, the crazier she gets. “Suddenly I saw everything flying and I had the feeling that people were chasing me. I also sometimes lay for an hour looking at the description of a box of Cornflakes. And I thought the television was talking to me. I said to my mother: ,,You see, Chantal Janzen is now looking at me. I just literally went crazy.”
Stop using
Fortunately, she manages to stop taking medication in June 2020, thanks to a friend. “She said, ‘We’re not going down now. You accomplished everything on your own, you don’t need that medication at all. That did help me. The feeling the meds gave me was nice, like smoking a joint. But if you consider all the side effects it has. I really don’t feel like that, I thought.”
A friend said to me: you achieved everything on your own, you don’t need that medication at all
The many exercises do have one advantage, in January 2021 her paralysis will largely disappear and she can walk again. ,,I am proud of the willpower and perseverance I have shown to pick up my life and walk again, but it is precisely that perseverance that has led to an addiction. So I still find it very difficult to say that I am proud of myself. I have come to realize that I just want to accept myself as I am and that I can achieve my goals without the medication.” Now she is doing everything she can to achieve her big dream of becoming a famous singer.
You suffer from paralysis when your muscles in a certain place in your body no longer work properly. The cause of a paralysis is the failure of part of the nervous system. The place where the nerves are affected is where the paralysis occurs.
Paralysis can have both a psychological and a physical cause. An example of a psychological cause is a depression or trauma. In this type of severe paralysis, extensive investigations are always carried out and a diagnosis is often successful. In this case, however, it was not possible to find a diagnosis that fits this paralysis.
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