Day 1

I had never heard of Guillain-Barre Syndrome before Monday, January 24, 2011.  Then I didn't know how to pronounce it.  My French sounds like garbage.  I settled on Gee Yun Bar Ray.  Hard G sound, like the G in goose.
Steve had complained about tingling in his fingers and hands on the 21st.  But he'd had symptoms like this before when his doctor had him on Niaspan several years ago. Since then, Steve had started taking niacin with an aspirin.  So now, with this tingling, he thought it was a reaction to the niacin.  Saturday, he again would clench-open-clench his fists and talk about numbness and tingling.

And now for the backstory:  Steve has sleep apnea and now uses a CPAP machine.  It's great!  It is like soft white noise for me, and it allows Steve to sleep in any position now without snoring. (His snoring was never bad to me, but my daughter complained.)  We had gotten back from Arizona where we attended the BCS National Championship, Auburn vs Oregon.  WAR EAGLE!  But while in AZ, Steve picked up a cold. So here we are at Saturday night, January 22, 2011 and Steve cannot cough while wearing his CPAP mask.
Saturday night into Sunday was a bust for sleep.  Steve would try to cough against the mask, wake up, move the mask, cough, re-attach... it must have been six or seven times.

Sunday afternoon, I made it to afternoon choir practice and a few minutes later I see Steve at practice.  But he looks terrible.  He was extremely unsteady on his feet.  I followed him home and we went to bed early.

Monday, Steve asked me to drive him to his doctor's office.  Without an appointment.  He wanted to be a walk-in.  I was expecting a four hour wait.  Steve held on to the back of my coat to get to the car.  It was rush hour traffic, and the doctor was 30 minutes away but 20 minutes into the drive, Steve tells me to take him to the ER.  He talked about muscle weakness, tingling, and then said, "I might stop breathing."  So, without a word, I turned around to get to the ER.

Steve needed a wheel chair now when he got out of the car.  The ER was practically empty, and by the time I had parked the car, they were calling him back to room D40.  And there we stayed for 14 hours.

Ok, now things start to blur, so I will highlight:
His platelet count was supposed to be 150,000.  His was 13,000.
The nurse chided me because, "Any tingling in the hands could be the first sign of a stroke.  You should always come to the ER if you have any tingling."  I wake up with tingling every day.  Who knew?
When Steve first went back to the ER, there were at least six other people hovering over him.  They took vitals, undressed him, got med info, papers signed, bracelets checked...  I will add more later as I remember.
It was late in the afternoon when the neurologist started saying "GBS".  Mind you, his accent was rather thick and we had to ask him to repeat a couple of times. (Like a Decatur girl trying to speak French, man-oh-man.)
They wanted to admit him, but there were no beds in the inn, I mean, hospital.