Living Life to the Fullest with TM

By: Sonia Lima

Name: Kim Harrison
Age: 51
Neurological Disorder: Transverse myelitis
Date of occurence: Oct. 6, 2004

Kim Harrison, 45 at the time, was on a business trip to Dallas, Texas when she was stricken with a neurological syndrome called transverse myelitis.

She was working as a supervisor for a warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia, and was flown out to Texas to help in another location. She woke up one morning while in Texas in her hotel room with her right foot asleep. "I wasn't doing anything adventurous, I wasn't doing anything dangerous," says Harrison. "I literally got up that morning, put my feet on the ground and my right foot was numb and had a pricking feeling."

Harrison assumed that she had slept wrong, or had pinched a nerve, or had picked up a box wrong at the warehouse and pulled a muscle in her back.

"I kept walking around thinking I could shake it off," explains Harrison. "This was around seven in the morning, and by nine I was walking down the hallways and walking into the walls. People kept looking at me thinking I was drunk. I would say, ‘No no no, I'm not. I don't know what's wrong!'"

About a half an hour later Harrison couldn't walk. She was put into an office chair and rolled out to the parking lot of the hotel. "I could feel the tingling feeling creep up my leg. Above my knee cap it felt normal," remembers Harrison, "below it felt like a needle stinging me and slowly going up. I thought it would all be better."

The tests begin
The people from the warehouse thought she was having a stroke, so they took her to a hospital five miles away. When Harrison arrived, the doctors were standing outside waiting for her. "I thought to myself, ‘Look valet service," laughs Harrison, "all of these people waiting on me.' I was making jokes the whole time, like look at all of this attention over my foot being asleep!"

There were three to four ER doctors poking and pushing her foot. "All this time I'm worried about my job," says Harrison, "and getting my work done because I didn't think I would be there that long."

Some of the nurses told Harrison that she would be going home that night. Harrison called her husband back in Atlanta. The nurse informed her that it wasn't a big deal, and there was no reason for him to come out to see her.

At around one or two in the afternoon, Harrison couldn't move her right leg or her toes.

The doctors sent her in for two MRI's and three CAT scans. Still, the doctors didn't know what was wrong with Harrison, so they wanted to do more CAT scans. She remembers thinking, "More CAT scans for my foot being asleep? You're kidding me!"