Elaina Tartal, a senior studying political science and sociology criminology, was healthy at the beginning of Fall Semester, focused on getting through her last year of classes. Yet, in November, an initial sinus infection threw her into a health crisis.
Additionally, Tartal was having trouble walking, thinking it was a pulled muscle in her leg that was preventing her from walking normally, but the pain began to increase.
“It was really hard to walk,” Tartal said. “I was like, ‘That's really weird.’ Then I just progressively got worse, and I couldn't walk at all — couldn’t move my legs. I couldn't use my hands. I couldn't grab on to anything, and it was just hard to do anything, so I went to urgent care after that.”
Two days later, she was hospitalized and diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome.
“Basically, your immune system is going into overdrive, and it started attacking the sinus infection that I had, but then it just does too much, and it starts attacking your nerves,” Tartal said. “It destroys the nerves so that you are unable to walk, use any of your hands, muscles, anything like that, and it can get really serious really fast where you can’t move your face, and you can’t use the muscles in your lungs, so you can’t breathe.”
Tartal was temporarily paralyzed, but keeping a sense of normalcy was her main priority, as her body was nowhere close to feeling like her own.
“I don't like to have things in my life affect school or work, and I'm a pretty independent person, so I tried to still take on everything,” Tartal said. “I didn't tell most of my professors that I had this. I turned in all of my assignments as I was supposed to. I still did everything I could. The only times that I told my professors was when I had in-person classes.”
As she continued to persevere in and outside of school, Tartal rebuilt her nerves in the hospital. She also relearned how to walk and grab onto things but recalled how challenging it was.
“It definitely was frustrating because you want your body to do something so badly, and it just can’t,” Tartal said.
After receiving treatment for five days using intravenous immunoglobulin, an IV treatment that replaces the damaged plasma and blood cells from the disease with that of a donor, Tartal was ready for physical therapy.
“I had silly putty that I would play with so that way I could strengthen my hands,” Tartal said. “Trying to do everyday tasks like standing up and sitting down in a seat a couple times was exhausting exercise. I would try to eat my breakfast with a fork. Just that motion and doing that was like physical therapy. It was difficult to get my mind, to get my nerves, to do the things that I'm used to doing.”
Reflecting on her experience with the disease, Tartal believes it taught her a lot about the people around her.
“There were a lot of people who were really supportive and really wanted to help ,and they were like, ‘If you really need anything, let me know,’” Tartal said, “Sending me encouraging texts, checking in with me because it is quite literally so boring in a hospital for a whole week. It was really eye-opening just to see. It reinforced who was really there for me and who really cared about me enough to check in and make sure everything was OK and if I needed anything. There were some people that weren't, and that was a shock.”
In the end, Guillain-Barre syndrome was no match for Tartal’s perseverance, even through the challenging circumstances.
“It tested my ability to handle things,” Tartal said. “I know that no matter what I get hit with, I'm going to be able to handle it because I literally went from being perfectly fine and normal to not being able to walk and having my whole life turned around. If I'm able to handle that and still have all my stuff turned in, everything that I needed to have done, done, then I'm good. I can pretty much handle anything.”
