After three months, Jan is back home with his family. A relief, especially since he is visibly better. “I’m not old enough yet, but I just climbed on the shovel for the first time,” he says in the interview. Despite the fact that Jan does not have much strength yet, he does not want to give up. The farmer is also still dependent on medication to combat the nerve pains caused by the disease, but under the circumstances he is doing well. “I’m used to physical work. Only my legs are tired at the end of the day.”
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Jan was discharged from the rehabilitation center last week. Since then, his recovery has progressed by leaps and bounds. “Last Friday I came from the rehabilitation center with a walker, but there is a lot of gravel in Denmark, so that doesn’t work. Then I started walking with crutches for balance. When climbing stairs I had to leave one crutch standing. And at one point At that moment I wanted to go to the children who were playing on the trampoline and I thought the stool was too far away, so now I walk without it.”
His wife Rianne is hopeful about Jan’s health, although the rehabilitation requires a lot of patience. It does not alter the fact that she had tense moments when the disease was diagnosed. “The average Guillain-Barré patient has reached the lowest point after four weeks, but with Jan it was only after six weeks and then the edge was made: can he get a second treatment or does he have to go to the Intensive Care Unit? But the second treatment luckily it took off very well, unlike the first,” she says.
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Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) is a disorder of the nerves outside the central nervous system: the motor nerves that run from the spinal cord to the muscles and the sensory nerves that go from the skin, joints and muscles to the spinal cord. People with Guillain-Barré often suffer from muscle weakness, paralysis and sensory disturbances such as numbness and tingling. The severity of the disease varies from mild symptoms to temporary complete paralysis, in which respiratory and facial muscles can also become paralyzed. Most patients recover.
The couple talked enthusiastically about their Danish adventure last year.
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