Hi, my name is Mel and I’m fundraising for my mum (Mandy) who is currently living with Guillian Barre Syndrome (GBS).

Mandy is 65 years old and has always been the life and soul wherever she went, has always managed to light up a room and has always rocked a good karaoke!

Over 20 years ago her and my step dad chose to make the brave decision to move to Spain and follow their dreams. This followed a successful career in the NHS for mum and an extremely long time in the pit for him. They have made the best memories and set out what they achieved to do and have never looked back - the definition of living the dream eh? They’ve been there that long - working initially and now retired that they have their citizenship and thankfully get to use the Spanish health care system as we would the NHS, not that they’ve ever really and truly needed it. But that’s all changed…

About 16 months ago, Mandy started to get ill, it was just an infection they said and gave her some antibiotics - great she’s cured. Or so we thought. Mandy started to intermittently lose feeling in her left leg which started to affect her mobility and had a knock on effect on her life too, back and forth to the Drs for months where they repeatedly told her there was nothing wrong, it’s all in her head, stop worrying about it and it’ll go away.

I visited last year and had to support my dear mum with everything, she was unable to do anything independently. She stopped eating, said she wasn’t hungry or she felt sick after every bite full. Shamefully I had to leave and come back to the UK for my job and children.

Two days after I returned to England I got a call that I never wanted to hear - an ambulance is on its way, we think your mum has had a stroke, we’ve had to lay her on the floor while we wait. So we waited…eventually the ambulance came and took her to hospital where after numerous test they said she had Cholecystitis and they were adamant that all of her symptoms would be cured if they just removed her gall bladder so that’s what they did.

When Mandy woke from her surgery she was unable to move, unable to sit up, unable to do anything - she was completely paralysed! We didn’t know what was happening. We were told to give it time and everything would just go back to normal. They discharged her home (they live in a first floor apartment), they didn’t have anything in place for a paralysed person to be there, so another ambulance was called and back to hospital she went.

I visited again last year, not too long after my first visit and it took me days to be able to see a dr, when I asked what they were doing to find out what was wrong with mum they simply told me they knew what it was - Guillian Barre Syndrome. The dr was so matter of fact about it that I was taken aback, why hadn’t he told her or my step dad? What was going to happen moving forward? So many questions.

Every symptom Mandy had all made sense now (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/guillain-barre-syndrome/)

Here came the hard part - the recovery! She was transferred from the local hospital to a neurological specialist hospital in order to have physio to hopefully regain her past life. It’s been hard and painful and she has made some recovery - a success story right?

They’ve discharged her home - her discharge letter states she is no longer meeting the criteria for funding as her recovery isn’t progressive enough. Not all people recover from this and everyone recovers at a different pace.

So now she is back home, in a hospital bed with my 70 year old step dad as her main carer, we have a care package in place, we are learning about the Spanish health care more than we ever thought we’d have to and we are funding physio ourselves seen as she can’t qualify for it anymore.

For ten months my step dad has gone to the hospital daily to feed Mandy, make sure she has fluids and generally just be there for her as all loving husbands / wives / children etc would do - this has cost up almost €1000 a month to do this…for 10 months!!!

I am wanting to raise some funds to help in anyway I can - ideally I would like to be able to raise enough to be able to get a wheelchair that is able to go up and down stairs so she can get out and have a bit of normality in her life - what 65 year old wants to be stuck in a bed for the rest of their lives? If we can get her up and about then that’s what I will strive to do!

Thank you for reading my story and for all the support ❤️