Samantha Bradshaw
Amanzimtoti, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa

When Sam first fell ill she was fit and healthy and very involved with her horse and show jumping.

She started with a headache just after Christmas.  The following day it got worse and we took her to our GP who thought that she was getting the flu and prescribed some antibiotics for her. The next day her lower back started getting sore so we took her back to the doctor.  He was not happy with her condition and took a sample of blood from her to send to the laboratory.

When I got back from work the following day, she called me to her bedroom and told me that she was frightened because her legs were feeling very weak and painful. We rushed her to the local hospital and when we tried to get her out of the car, she just collapsed on the floor. She was totally paralyzed from the waist down.  She was immediately transferred to St. Augustines Hospital in Durban where Dr. Farhana Motala attended to her.  This lady doctor was fantastic.  They did every type of test on her for days before they were able to detect what the virus was.  I will never forget what Doctor Motala said to us that evening: “thank G-d you got your child here so quickly; maybe we will be able to save her.” Those few words nearly killed me.

Sam was 17 at the time and due to start her matric year at school.  Sam spent a month in the hospital and thereafter was in a wheelchair for about seven months before life started coming back to her legs. She used crutches for most of the rest of the year before she was able to walk unaided. To this day, nearly four years later, she still walks with a slight limp and the muscles in her left leg are a lot weaker than her other leg. During the time she was in the wheelchair, we were able to get her to school each day. She passed three of her subjects that year and did the other three subjects the next year through Damelin.

She then spent the next year at the Damelin Equine College in Johannesburg, studying equine stud management and then went over to Kentucky in America and spent six months working on a stud farm there. She is now back home and working in Cape Town with Basil Marcus, learning all about the training of race horses.

The underneath of her feet are still very tender and still feels a burning sensation when she gets into the pool or walks bare feet on the wet grass. Her bladder is the only thing that did not really come back to life.  There is a brilliant urologist here in Durban, Dr. Roger Mierzwinski. He did the Botox injections on Samantha (into the bladder) and you cannot believe how it helped her bladder.  From going to the loo every half hour, she now only needs to go 2 to 3 times a day. The botox relaxes the bladder muscles and lasts anything up to 10 months before having to be repeated, depending on the person. With Dr. Roger and the botox, she is able to lead a normal life.