Why can’t I move my legs?

The Search for a Reason

A new doctor came by and asked about recent vaccinations or viral infections. I’d had a cold three weeks earlier, but nothing serious.

He ordered different blood tests looking for rare antibodies. Those came back normal, too, which seemed to personally offend him like I was wasting his time.

“We think you should try physical therapy,” he said. “Sometimes if we can retrain the neural pathways, the function returns”.

“But you don’t know why this happened,” I said. “The body is mysterious,” he said.

“What matters is getting you walking again”. The physical therapist was aggressively cheerful.

She kept saying things like, “Let’s see what we can do today,” while manipulating my dead legs. She’d tell me to push against her hand and then act surprised when nothing happened.

It felt like I wasn’t trying hard enough. “I want you to visualize walking,” she said.

“Really see yourself standing up”. “I’m paralyzed, not lacking imagination,” I said.

“Attitude is important for recovery,” she said and made more notes. On day five, a psychiatrist showed up even though I hadn’t agreed to see one.

He asked about my childhood and my marriage and whether I’d ever had anxiety. He used the phrase secondary gain.

This meant he thought I was getting something out of being paralyzed. “What could I possibly gain from this?” I asked.

“Sometimes we’re not conscious of our motivations,” he said. I told him to leave.

Mark started asking if maybe I should try the anti-depressants they were suggesting. Even he was starting to doubt me.

I could see it in the way he’d test my legs when he thought I wasn’t watching. He was dropping things on them to see if I’d react.

On day seven, they said they were discharging me. Nothing was physically wrong, so insurance wouldn’t cover more hospital days.

They’d arranged for a wheelchair and outpatient therapy. The neurologist gave me pamphlets about conversion disorder and functional neurological symptoms.

“So, you’re giving up?” I said. “We’ve run every test,” she said.

“Sometimes the best thing is to go home and see if it resolves on its own”. They wheeled me out and Mark drove me home in silence.

He’d built a ramp to the front door and moved our bedroom to the ground floor. He’d accepted this was permanent or psychological or both.

I was completely on my own now. That night, I was googling desperately when I found a forum post from someone with my exact symptoms.

The doctors had said it was psychological for two years. Then, she’d paid for a specialized scan not covered by insurance.

They’d found inflammation in her spinal cord so small the regular MRI had missed it. She’d been paralyzed for two years, being told she was crazy when the answer had been right there.

She could walk now after the right treatment. She’d posted the name of the doctor who’d finally believed her.

I called his office with shaking hands. The receptionist said he was booked for months, but when I explained my situation, she said to hold.

The doctor himself got on the line. “How long have you been paralyzed?” he asked.

“Seven days,” I said. “Get here tomorrow,” he said.

“Bring all your scans”. “We might have a very small window to figure this out before permanent damage sets in”.

I hung up the phone and my hands were still shaking. Mark was already asleep in the bedroom downstairs, the one he’d moved us into because he thought this was permanent.

I wheeled myself to the desk and started pulling out every piece of paper from the hospital stay. Discharge instructions went in one pile, test results in another.

The pamphlets about conversion disorder went straight in the trash. My hands kept trembling as I tried to organize everything.

I couldn’t stop moving because if I stopped, I’d start thinking about what permanent damage meant. The radiologist reports all said the same thing.

“Normal, normal, normal,” like they were mocking me. I found the business card from the neurologist who’d suggested the psychiatrist, and I tore it in half.

Then I found the EMG results and the nerve conduction studies. I put those in a folder labeled proof, even though they’d proved nothing.

The clock on the wall said it was past midnight. I kept going through papers, making sure I had copies of everything.

I gathered Mark’s insurance card, my ID, and the list of medications they’d sent me home with, even though none of them were actually treating anything. I made a checklist on a notepad.

This included medical records, insurance information, the name of every test they’d run, and the dates of every symptom. By the time I finished organizing, it was almost 2:00 in the morning.

My eyes were burning. But at least I had something concrete to show this new doctor.

At 6:00, I wheeled into the bedroom and shook Mark’s shoulder. He opened his eyes, looking confused.

I told him we were driving three hours to the specialist today. We needed to leave by 7:00.

He sat up and started to say something about work and whether this was really necessary. He mentioned another doctor when we’d already seen so many.

I just looked at him and whatever he saw in my face made him stop talking. He nodded and got out of bed and went to get dressed without another word.

I heard him in the bathroom and then making coffee in the kitchen while I got myself ready. This took twice as long as it used to because everything required planning now.

By 6:45, we were loading my wheelchair into the car along with the folder of documents and a cooler of snacks. I didn’t know how long this would take.

At 8:00 exactly, I called the first hospital’s medical records department from the car while Mark drove. The clerk who answered sounded bored.

I explained I needed my MRI images on a CD immediately because I had an appointment with a specialist today. She told me it takes three business days to process records requests and I’d need to fill out a release form.

I actually started crying on the phone. These were not fake tears, but real tears because I couldn’t take one more person telling me to wait.

I told her I’d been paralyzed for eight days and nobody could tell me why. I needed those images today or I might have permanent nerve damage.

There was a long silence and then she said if someone could pick it up by noon, she’d have it ready. Just come to the records office on the second floor.

I thanked her about five times and gave her my information. Then Mark had to pull over at a gas station so I could use the bathroom.

The drive was the most humiliating three hours of my life. We had to stop twice for bathroom breaks.

Each time Mark had to physically carry me into the women’s room because not every rest stop had accessible stalls. The first time he tried to be gentle about it.

By the second stop he was just lifting me like a piece of furniture. I could see him struggling with something while he carried me.

His face was doing that thing where he was trying to figure out if this was real or if I was somehow doing this to myself. I was too exhausted to care what he thought anymore.

I just focused on getting through each moment, getting to this doctor who’d said to come immediately. We stopped at the first hospital at 11:30 and Mark ran in to get the CD while I waited in the car.

He came back 10 minutes later with a thin envelope and we kept driving. The specialist office was in a medical building near a university hospital.

Mark got my wheelchair out and I transferred into it and we went up to the third floor. The intake nurse called me back at exactly 1:15 and Mark stayed in the waiting room.

She led me to an exam room and spent the next 45 minutes taking my history. For the first time since this started, someone wrote down every single detail without that look.

You know the look, the one that says they think you’re exaggerating or confused or making it up. She asked about the cold I’d had three weeks ago.

“What day exactly did it start? What were my symptoms? When did they resolve?” She made notes when I described waking up paralyzed.

I mentioned how sudden it was and how my legs had just been dead weight. She asked about the hospital tests and wrote down every normal result.

She was nodding like normal results meant something important instead of meaning I was wasting everyone’s time. When I mentioned how the other doctors had treated me, she just kept writing.

No judgment on her face at all. Then Dr. Holloway came in and I knew immediately this was different.

She examined me with complete focus. She tested my reflexes with a little hammer and ran something sharp along the bottom of my feet to check sensation.

She explained what she was checking for with each test, not talking down to me, but actually teaching me about my own body. She had me try to move my legs in different ways.

She measured how much I could do and wrote everything down in specific terms. She didn’t just write “patient reports weakness”.

I told her about the conversion disorder diagnosis and the psychiatrist who’d used the phrase secondary gain. She stopped writing and looked right at me.

She said she believed something physical was happening to me. She said my symptoms were real and we were going to figure out what was causing them.

I actually started sobbing. I completely broke down crying in the exam room because someone finally believed me.

She handed me tissues and waited until I could breathe again. She explained I might have something called transverse myelitis, which is inflammation in the spinal cord.

It can be subtle enough to hide on regular scans, but serious enough to cause real paralysis. This was exactly what I was experiencing.

Or it could be another inflammatory condition. There were several possibilities we needed to rule out.

The validation felt like oxygen after drowning. It was like I could finally breathe after eight days of being told I was crazy.

But she was very clear this was still a working theory. We needed proof before we could start treatment.

She needed to see my MRI images and probably do more testing. I gave her the CD from the hospital and she said she’d review it carefully.

She would check it with a colleague who specialized in reading these scans. Dr. Holloway pulled up a stool and sat down so we were at eye level.

She told me she wanted to do a high-resolution MRI. This would be a 3T MRI with contrast that could pick up inflammation the regular scan might have missed.

She also mentioned possibly doing a spinal tap to check for antibodies and signs of inflammation in my spinal fluid. She warned me these tests were expensive and invasive.

The spinal tap especially could be uncomfortable and insurance might fight covering them. But they were time-sensitive.

If there was inflammation, we needed to catch it before permanent nerve damage set in. She said we might only have weeks, not months, to figure this out and start treatment.

I told her to order whatever test she needed. I didn’t care about the cost or the insurance because I just needed answers.

She nodded and started making notes about what to schedule first. The next morning, I was on the phone with my insurance company at 8:00 when they opened.

I’d barely slept because my mind kept racing through everything Dr. Holloway had said. I was finally having hope mixed with fear about the time pressure.

The insurance representative asked for my member ID and date of birth. Then I explained I needed pre-authorization for a 3T MRI with contrast.

She pulled up my records and I could hear her typing. Then she said, “I just had an MRI eight days ago”.

“That was normal. So why did I need another one?” I tried to explain about the specialist and the possibility of subtle inflammation.

I mentioned how the regular MRI might have missed something important. She kept saying if the first scan was normal, there was no medical necessity for a second one.

I spent two hours on that phone call getting transferred to different departments. I explained my symptoms over and over, trying not to scream into the phone.

Finally, someone said they’d review the request and I’d hear back in five to seven business days. I asked what I was supposed to do if permanent damage set in while they were reviewing.

She said that was between me and my doctor. That afternoon, Dr. Holloway called me herself.

She’d personally called Duncan, a neuroradiologist she trusted, and they’d reviewed my original MRI together. They used his high-resolution monitors.

I sat by the phone feeling my heart pound, terrified they’d find nothing again. I worried this would be another dead end.

But Dr. Holloway said Duncan thought he might see something questionable in my thoracic spine. It was a very faint area that could be inflammation or could be normal variation.

It wasn’t definitive enough to diagnose anything, but it was enough to justify the better imaging. She said she’d submit a peer-to-peer review with my insurance company.

This meant she’d talk directly to their medical reviewer and explain why this test was necessary. She told me to sit tight and she’d fight for the authorization.

After we hung up, I just sat there holding the phone. I was feeling something I hadn’t felt in over a week.

Not quite hope, but maybe the possibility of hope. It felt like there might actually be an answer somewhere if we could just find it.

Two days later, I was back in Dr. Holloway’s exam room for another complete neurological check. She spent over an hour this time.

She was not rushing through anything like the hospital doctors had done. She tested my reflexes with the little hammer.

She tapped different spots on my knees and ankles and elbows while writing down numbers I didn’t understand. She had me try to move each toe separately while she watched and made marks.

She used a pen to test sensation, asking me to say when I felt sharp versus dull. I could tell she was mapping out exactly where my feeling changed.

She measured the distance I could lift each leg, which was basically nothing. But she wrote it all down with exact numbers.

She checked my muscle tone by moving my legs in different directions and feeling how much resistance there was. When she finished, she had pages of documentation with grades and measurements.

This was real proof that my body wasn’t working right. Having it all written down in official medical language felt important.

It was like building evidence for a case nobody believed yet. She made copies of everything for my records and said this would help justify the advanced imaging to insurance.

The whole exam made me feel taken seriously in a way the hospital never had. My symptoms mattered enough to measure carefully.