Hernando Rodríguez woke up one morning in a hospital bed, disoriented, medicated and connected to medical equipment.
His bewilderment increased with the call from a friend, who burst into tears of happiness and amazement at being able to have a normal conversation with him again.
"Well, thank you", answered Rodríguez, surprised, "but I was not so serious."
His wife Solangi Urueña was by his side, as she had been for the last 22 years, with few exceptions.
She remembers looking at him and thinking: "When am I going to tell him everything we've been through?"
At the end of the call, Urueña said: "Come on, my love, we have to talk."
For a month, Rodríguez had been in critical condition, unconscious and paralyzed by an unusual syndrome.
He had come to the brink of death and returned: in the words of his doctors, he was “born again” and thousands of people had closely followed his recovery.
"I began to show him videos and tell him everything," says Urueña from his home in Miami.
"He started crying, and he would ask, 'How was I so bad?'
And we both started crying ”.
***
Rodríguez, his wife and their three children contracted the coronavirus earlier this year.
They were planning a trip from Florida to Tennessee to celebrate their 17 years of marriage and feared they would have to suspend it, but when they were tested shortly after, they all tested negative and on January 9, 2021, they were able to leave.
Hernando Rodríguez and Solangi Urueña in Tennessee in January 2021. Courtesy of Solangi Urueña
It was there that Rodríguez began to feel bad.
It began with an annoyance "that
was not just any pain: it was as if my legs were literally burning from the inside," he
recalls.
No pain reliever worked against that excruciating pain.
When they returned to Florida, they went to a nearby clinic where they assured them that it was post-COVID syndrome, a series of long-term sequelae that include fatigue, disorientation and neuropathies such as pain in the extremities.
They recommended that she continue taking pain relievers.
But the pain persisted, the weakness increased, and his wife began to worry.
One noon, when it was time to prepare lunch, Rodríguez wanted to accompany her, but had to ask her for help to stand up.
"You're scaring me, my love," Urueña told him.
He came stumbling into the kitchen, took a glass of water and collapsed:
"My legs don't respond to me
,
" he
exclaimed.
Rodríguez “turned green”, his wife remembers, “I was screaming like crazy”.
His nephews, who live in Colombia, were visiting and ran to help lift him.
They asked for an Uber to go to Kendall Regional Medical Center.
It was January 20, 2021, just as hospitals across the country were on the brink of collapse from the coronavirus pandemic.
How dangerous is Guillain-Barré syndrome?
An expert clarifies it
Aug. 20, 202102: 24
When they arrived, about 15 minutes later, the paralysis spread throughout the rest of his body: if it reached his respiratory muscles and they did not intubate him in time, his life would be in danger.
They did exams, CT scans, and MRIs.
Urueña remembers being "inconsolable";
the nurses took pity on her and let her see him before transferring him to the intensive care unit.
When he left,
the neurologist was with him who told him the diagnosis: Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Despite being rare, this disease has been identified as a possible sequel to the coronavirus.
It usually occurs after the body defeats an infection (which can be a bacteria or a virus, in this case it was Sars-COV-2).
Instead of calming down, the body's defenses lose control and attack healthy myelin cells, the layer that lines the connections between neurons in the brain and the entire body's nervous system, according to the National Institutes of Disorders. Neurological.
[A neurologist explains what the Guillain-Barré disease suffered by Vicente Fernández is]
Like the plastic that covers power lines, myelin ensures that electrical signals that fire from neuron to neuron are not scattered, making all functions of the body and mind possible, from walking or holding a fork to reading a newspaper. article on the internet like this one.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to 6,000 people develop Guillain-Barré in the United States each year.
At least 250 cases have been reported in a dozen countries, from Italy and Egypt to India and the United Kingdom, which have occurred after a COVID-19 infection, and at least 100 other cases after the application of Johnson & # 39; s vaccine. Johnson.
It is not known what causes it or why it afflicts some and not others.
There is also no known cure.
Although the majority of those affected recover, those who come to suffer a complete paralysis, such as the one suffered by Rodríguez, are less likely to survive.
***
Hernando Rodríguez was born in Ibagué, Colombia, 46 years ago, and in 1999 he met his wife, Solangi Urueña, 42, in Cali.
He liked it from the first moment, but for months "he didn't even give it the time," she says.
One day, when it seemed that he was going to give up, she gave him the first kiss.
Two years later they were married.
They had three children: Juan Pablo, 22, Mariana, 16, and Gerónimo, 14.
Hernando Rodríguez and Solangi Urueña in Cali, Colombia, in 1999, the year they met.
Courtesy Solangi Urueña
Three years ago they emigrated from Colombia to the United States, after spending half their lives together.
But when he was hospitalized on January 20, his wife was unable to accompany him due to coronavirus restrictions.
She then asked to install a tripod with an iPad in Rodríguez's room to see him and talk to him, day, night, conscious or unconscious,
"so that he would not feel there, alone and forgotten."
Thus began an odyssey against a disease that his family knew nothing about.
Guillain-Barré syndrome is particularly dangerous because it affects the entire body.
Immobility can trigger, for example, clots in the legs that travel to the heart or lungs;
Any complication, no matter how small, can be fatal.
Precisely to avoid clots, Rodríguez had to wear special compression boots that stimulated his circulation.
But the immobility created an open wound on his tailbone that had to be disinfected often to avoid infection at all costs.
Teams of nurses came and went at all hours, and there, next to Rodríguez, whatever was allowed, was his wife, helping, observing and learning.
Hernando Rodríguez had to wear compression boots to stimulate his circulation and prevent clots from forming.Courtesy Solangi Urueña
The most unexpected complication came five days after being admitted.
To the doctors' surprise, Rodríguez tested positive for COVID-19 again that day and for the entire following month.
He developed severe pneumonia that lasted 50 days.
They had to give him a tracheostomy to breathe, and he couldn't chew or swallow, so he was fed and medicated with a tube connected to his stomach.
10 days passed and, despite the anguish of his family, Rodríguez seemed to recover: he began to move his face and smile.
"We were all happy, the neurologist called us, put the camera on, greeting him, that euphoria of everyone," recalls Urueña. But two days later, on February 7, the paralysis returned and stronger than ever.
"I felt that I went in to heal him"
After 28 days in hospital, a call woke Urueña from a deep sleep.
It was 2:40 in the morning.
Rafael, one of the nurses who took care of Rodríguez and with whom he had become friends, told him, "Your husband is not well ... I did not leave him like that last night."
Although Rodríguez had gone from intensive care to intermediate care, Rafael told her that he had had to call the ICU doctors and showed her husband by video call.
"When he put it on the camera I almost died," she says, "it was not my husband, he was very, very ill."
Rafael encouraged her to come running to the hospital and seek permission to see him: "Call whoever it is, but you have to come in," he said desperately.
"He salivated all the time because the muscles in his throat were not working yet, nor could he swallow through the tracheostomy and he could breathe in," Urueña explains. Courtesy Solangi Urueña
"I was in a crisis of ... it hit me like a panic attack," she recalls.
Outside the hospital, that morning she begged the head of nurses to let her in: "I beg you, please, let me see my husband," she remembers telling her, "I've been with him in the emergency room for a month, I never do it again. I have been able to touch, I have not been able to feel him, he is wrong,
I know that if he sees me he can stop, I know that when he sees me, his energy, my energy…
we need each other, please, this is cruel ”.
They told him that he could enter but later.
At 10 in the morning he was finally able to go to an ICU room, where he received a call from one of the doctors, who told him that they had been struggling for hours to stabilize his low blood pressure and the rhythm of his heart, which was beating rapidly. 200 per minute: they had done everything medically possible, he told her, but his condition was "critical and delicate" and he was unresponsive.
Although they did not say it, she felt that they were calling her to say goodbye.
A nurse came out to show her in, but just before she was detained again because she had suddenly gotten worse.
There, at the entrance of the room, Urueña knelt, raised his hands and began to pray.
"I felt that one person took one hand and another person took the other, and when I opened my eyes I thought they were going to stop me, but they were two nurses praying and crying with me," he recalls.
"You can't imagine everything that one achieves ... I don't know, to generate, to move, to do, in a moment of so much anguish and so much despair."
You cannot imagine everything that one achieves ... I don't know, to generate, to move, to do, in a moment of so much anguish and so much despair "
Sol Urueña
The nurse came out again and said she had a minute to see him.
“When I entered the room, she told him, 'Your wife is here' ... when he heard that, my husband came back.
His mouth was contorted ... no, it wasn't him.
And when she told him that, he opened his eyes and closed his mouth, that is, he came to.
And of course, I went over to him, I gave him kisses and kisses, I told him to be strong, how calm, that God was with us, and I began to pray, in a way ... that I could not explain why I am short of words ”, he explains.
[These are the symptoms of Guillain-Barré syndrome, the rare condition linked to the J&J vaccine]
Nine hours later, doctors managed to stabilize his heart and found what was killing him: a urinary infection that had reached his kidneys.
"The doctors told me that that day he was born again," says Urueña.
But now the second leg of his odyssey was beginning: to learn to eat, swallow, go to the bathroom, sit, walk, “just like a baby”.
“Hernando, unfortunately, had to get to the point of respiratory failure,” says
José Barros, an internal medicine specialist who treated him at Kendall Regional Medical Center.
What impressed him the most was how quickly he recovered with the dedication of his family, and especially his wife, he adds.
"We saw all the affection, love ... that is, you are talking about
a lady who slept looking at her husband on the iPad,
we put it on a tripod and she managed to see him at night, and 24 hours a day" says Barros.
His children also spoke to him by video call at all hours.
His daughter Mariana told him what she had done at school that day and sang the songs that they performed together in church.
Nephews, cousins and uncles sent her voice messages encouraging her.
“I spent 30 days without seeing my husband, only on camera.
I don't know what to call it ... a torture, a crime, that's very hard, "he explains," it really is tenacious:
do you know that the person you love the most is there dying, and you can't even go and hold his hand? ?
Very hard, really.
Maddening".
The doctors told me: 'You are excess of love ... no, this woman cannot get out of here, she is going to stop him from that bed, whatever it may be "
Urueña sun
Urueña asked to be allowed to spend more time with him, perhaps to stay in the hospital one night, or several. It was not an easy decision, because the COVID-19 restrictions meant that he would not be able to enter and leave, he would have to stay with him while his children remained with family outside. Finally, when he saw how he had reacted to the presence of his wife that day when he almost died, and after insisting relentlessly for a month since he was admitted, when Rodríguez left intensive care and his coronavirus test was negative, the hospital left that Urueña stay with him. She then went to work.
"She came to work hand in hand, to help, to move, to ask," explains Rodríguez.
"She became a VIP nurse, respiratory therapist, physiotherapist, rehabilitation, hairdresser, everything, for love ... Wow, that
bald girl
won a trip to Hawaii," he jokes, and she, next to him, laughs.
"The doctors told me: 'You are an excess of love ... no, this woman cannot get out of here, she is going to stop him from that bed, whatever it is," says Urueña.
Urueña worked hand in hand with doctors and nurses from Kendall Regional Hospital to accelerate her husband's rehabilitation.
Courtesy Sol Urueña
For much of that first month, Rodríguez was sedated because of pain or because his involuntary movements made treatment difficult.
The medicines caused nightmares and hallucinations.
When he was finally able to move his head a bit, the two devised a system to communicate, letter by letter.
"She would say to me, 'Do you want to tell me something?'
Yes. 'Vowel or consonant?'
Vocal.
And I shook my head with each letter ”, remembers Rodríguez,“ it took us hours ”.
Urueña stayed the entire day by her husband's side.
He cut his nails, his hair, his beard, helped him relieve himself and cleaned him from his ears to his feet.
She changed her hospital gown for his clothes, and when the physiotherapists left, between looks and jokes that only the two of them understood, she continued the therapy for hours more so that she could regain control of her muscles and her life as quickly as possible. possible.
"Their love for each other was incredible,"
recalls the doctor.
He was “very impressed” by a banner that his family made for him and that was always in his room.
Rodríguez and Urueña still have it in their room in Doral.
Mariana and Gerónimo Rodríguez, children of Sol and Hernando, build a banner for their father in the living room of their home in Doral, Florida, February 2021 Courtesy Sol Urueña
“Every time I opened my eyes amid so much medication, I saw [the banner] head-on and it reconnected to my family,” says Rodríguez.
“I was sedated, I didn't realize anything,
but [Urueña] at home, in that anguish, the uncertainty, the pain of the children, alone in this country.
She took refuge in prayer ”.
His wife was not alone.
From the beginning, he sent voice messages via WhatsApp to his friends and family to update them on Rodríguez's status, and they forwarded them to others.
Thus they reached religious congregations of thousands of people, Catholics, Christians, Adventists, Pentecostals, Jews, in cities of Colombia and the United States.
"It became massive," he
says.
In the churches they hung photos of the family and offered Masses, vigils and fasts for them.
They organized prayer groups to pray for him.
Dozens of people called them moved, crying, to tell him how hearing his story had led them to value their partners more and brought them closer to their faith.
Some offered money, since Rodríguez was the head of the family and the medical bills would not take long to accumulate, but Urueña only asked them to pray for him.
"I
was absolutely sure that my husband was going to get out of that ICU and get out of that bed,"
she explains. "I never doubted.
***
That day when Urueña was finally able to tell her husband how serious he had been, what hurt him the most was thinking about what his family suffered while he was unconscious.
He was thinking, for example, of when his daughter Mariana would sing to him via video call.
"The most painful thing was not remembering that special moment," he says through tears.
"It was the way she would tell me, 'Dad, don't go.'
"I have to accept that once I was afraid," says Mariana, but "I have been strong with my mother ... it was the strength and the faith and the love of all people: everything that my father one day gave to women. people, it was returned ”.
Rodríguez spent 78 days in the hospital and working hard on his rehabilitation, with a regimen of physical therapy and exercises that left him sweating, but always upbeat, cracking jokes, and grateful for his progress.
They finally got out of the hospital on April 8.
Although doctors told her it could take up to a year to start walking, by then she was already taking a few steps with a walker.
Rodríguez and Urueña returning home for the first time in Doral, Florida, after weeks in intensive care and therapy, April 8, 2021. Juliana Jiménez J. / Noticias Telemundo
The first thing he did when he left was go to church.
Being able to kneel again to thank God was the most important thing to him that day, he says.
From there, they went to his house, where he was received by about 30 neighbors and friends, with banners with phrases such as: "You are a brave man," "a warrior," and "a miracle of God."
"People like him move hearts", said that day Amparo Saavedra, a lifelong friend who was there to greet him with colored balloons in hand.
“If I hadn't had my family with me during that time, I think my healing process would have been slower, or maybe I simply wouldn't have struggled,” says Rodríguez.
"Part of medicine was that," he adds.
If you do things well, if you treat patients, if you have a family that helps us, they will succeed "
DR.
JOSÉ BARROS, INTERNIST
During crises and rehab, he says he was never frustrated or depressed.
"Many people get depressed in bed and do not move forward because of that," he says, "they feel alone, they lose hope."
Multiple studies (and analysis of studies) endorsed by the National Institutes of Health indeed confirm that stress delays healing and that emotional well-being and good personal relationships, in quantity and quality, accelerate the healing of wounds and trauma. physical.
"He was quite fast," says Dr. Barros, "think about this: he is a patient who
had muscular atrophy, he did not breathe on his own, he did not eat on his own, and he recovered."
"I don't forget the first day we managed to sit him on the bed," Barros recalls with a smile.
Rodríguez's case is one that made him reflect: "With these patients, you realize that the things that we think are guaranteed are not guaranteed," he explains, "the Covid epidemic has been horrible.
We see many patients who actually do not make it, with these types of diseases and many other complications of Covid.
This case for us was like that light of hope that, yes,
if you do things well, if you treat patients, if you have a family that helps us, they will succeed ”.
"Like me there are thousands"
During his arduous recovery, Rodríguez thought not only about returning to his normal life, and even running the Miami marathon next year, but also about helping others like him.
Now people with Guillain-Barré are calling them for advice.
They share their story, the videos of their recovery and, most of all, their good cheer.
“Like me there are thousands,” says Rodríguez, “to those who are in bed, it is to bring that message that it is possible, to have faith in God, to be strong, that the family is important, that you have to work as a team , that they are going to stop and that they are going to have a normal life ”.
