Lots of kid make up lies to get out of school. Having a stomach ache or a fever are pretty common. What if your lie was that your legs stopped working and you couldn’t walk?
On a Monday morning, I was in fifth grade waking up for school. Getting up out of bed, I hung my small legs over the side and fell straight to the floor. I was unable to get up and stand. I was confused. At only nine years old my legs had just stopped working.
As I army crawled down the upstairs hallway of my house, I found my dad drinking his coffee at the dinner table. He looked down me confused at why I was on the floor. My mom was just walking in and I recall the conversation vaguely. It went along the lines of “Wow good excuse for skipping school, now get up and get ready for the bus.” Apparently this “act” I was putting on was not impressing my parents because they went on with their day.
When I was still crawling around hours later complaining that my legs stopped working, I was finally taken to the emergency room. I had IV’s, bloodwork, an EKG to check my heart and many more tests ran on me that night. The doctors did not know what it was at first. I was paralyzed from the waste down, unable to go to the bathroom or reach my feet to put socks on. This was a traumatic and scary event for my nine-year-old self and for my parents. My parents just wanted answers. In the back of their heads they thought that their child may not walk again.
After three days in the hospital, finally an answered was reached. A virus that attacks the muscles called viral myositis. The doctors told my parents and myself that they have only seen it in males, more specifically, male track runners. I was an active child, I played on three soccer teams at one time and they think that had something to do with the over working of the body and the virus itself. My parents always thought it was too much with three teams going from practice to practice but I insisted.
I went home after three days, but I was still unable to walk. I missed that whole week of school and came back on crutches. My classmates asked if I broke my leg and where my cast was. I didn’t have a cast for them to sign, I didn’t really have answers they would understand either. At that time, I think I was more concerned about getting back to soccer practice then what just happened to me. Getting viral myositis is very rare, there are fewer than 20,000 cases per year in U.S..
It is very unlikely that I will ever get this again, but if I was away at college and got this, it would be so much harder. Missing school and experiencing being paralyzed is not something that is easily taken on with the school work-load. I don’t know anyone who has had this virus because it is so rare.
I was always known as the “hospital child” in my family. Before viral myositis I had 26 stitches in my left leg after falling on a sharp object at just four years-old. After viral myositis, I broke my hand in soccer, tore my ACL twice, tore my meniscus and had two concussions. My parents always supported me in sports but were afraid whenever I fell in a game.
To most people viral myositis just sounds like a medical term to me I look at that word and remember my experience. I think about how thankful I am that I can walk today, that I can run and play soccer.
