MY REASON FOR LIVING

Waking up unable to speak or move, Vanessa Abraham, 45, just wanted to be a mum again

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My daughter Anna* chattered happily as she pushed her toy trains along the track snaking around our lounge. It was March 2019 and, aged three, there was nothing she enjoyed more than playing with Thomas the Tank Engine. 'Choo choo,' she giggled, and I knelt down to join in, laughing along with her. It had taken five years for me and my husband Dale, then 48, to conceive our baby girl and I wanted to treasure every moment.

Days later, I breathed in the fresh air, riding quad bikes with Anna and Dale during a camping trip to Borrego Springs in the California desert. My only niggle was that I felt tired and nauseous. 'I think I'm getting ill,' I sighed to Dale.

RASPY VOICE

Back home, I struggled through my work as a speech therapist, my voice raspy. By the following day, my body was aching and I kept being sick. Thinking it was a bad case of flu, I spent the rest of the week in bed while my parents Pam, then 70, and Allen, 72, looked after Anna.

But the following weekend I felt so ill, I drove myself to an urgent care centre. I was given medication and IV fluids, but I kept on feeling worse. Then, the following night, trying to get out of bed, I slumped to the floor and couldn't raise my head. Dizzy and weak, I was seeing double and couldn't walk without Dale supporting my neck. He rushed me to hospital where, heavily medicated, I fell unconscious.

When I woke hours later, still heavily sedated, I was unable to talk. My right arm felt like lead and, with horror, it hit me that part of my upper body was paralysed.

'You're in Intensive Care,' a doctor explained. 'We're running tests to find out more.' I realised that I was intubated, with a tube in my mouth to allow me to breathe and a nasogastric tube because I couldn't eat. I also had a catheter as I was unable to go to the toilet.