Peter Wilkerson and his wife Samantha share a moment as newlyweds in the kitchen of their downtown apartment just two months after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barr, a rare neurological condition. The two pushed up their marriage date and were wed during his treatment at Siskin.
Joel Elmore stands with his girlfriend Taylor Thornburg, who is also a senior at Covenant College
Joel Elmore stands with his girlfriend Taylor Thornburg, who is also a senior at Covenant CollegeThe nightmare starts with a tingling sensation in the hands and feet. Then it begins crawling up and up as your sense of touch melts away and the body turns against you. Simple tasks get progressively harder until climbing a flight of stairs brings you to your knees. It becomes impossible to feel your fingers, much less lift them and, after a little while, you can’t swallow your food. You can’t talk. You may not even be able to breathe.
Peter Wilkerson, a 24-year-old basketball coach at Covenant College, first noticed something was wrong on a team trip to North Carolina at the end of January. His hands and feet started prickling and they became extremely sensitive to temperature – placing his hand on a cool window felt like touching a sheet of ice.
Then he started to get tired. Walking around his home was exhausting, and the night after he got back to Chattanooga, he fell in the dark on his way to the bathroom. The next night, he had to crawl to bed, and after that, his face went numb.
A week later, he was in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, trying to force down pureed food because he couldn’t swallow anything else.
“I thought I had had a stroke,” Wilkerson said.