A man from Bradford has been left paralysed after suffering from food poisoning and a fever "for a few days", reports Yorkshire Live. Asam Iqbal, a father of four, initially fell ill 11 months ago before being diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) - a serious condition which affects the nerves and often begins with symptoms in the feet and hands.
His brother Asif said Asam had not been eating or drinking much after falling ill with a bout of food poisoning, so assumed he was just feeling weak when he fell off his bed and couldn't get up. Asif said: "He had a fever. He was recovering from food poisoning. I went to see him and he didn’t look that well.
"When he fell off the bed he couldn’t get up. Me and his wife had to get him back up. We thought it was weakness because he hadn’t eaten."
But Asif says as Asam's condition deteriorated, they called 111 and were told a nurse would call back in eight hours. Asif said: "We thought it was too long so we called a cousin who is a doctor who came and said we had to call 999. We had to get him to the hospital. At this point, he could only move his upper body. It was a nightmare. When we got there later he couldn’t move his arms at all."
At the hospital, the Iqbal family received a shocking diagnosis when they were told Asif had GBS, a rare condition that their cousin, a doctor, had only ever seen or heard of once in his entire career. Things only got worse from there.
The family were next told Asam had an overactive thyroid and had to be put in a coma. The nightmare continued hours later when their mother was admitted to hospital with a twisted bowel which required surgery, leaving her in the same ICU as her son.
Asam came out of a coma six weeks later, around the same time as his mother's recovery, but has remained in hospital since. He said of the ordeal: "I was in a coma for six weeks. It was only around two months that I realised what was going on and what had happened.
"And at the time I could not talk and I had lost the use of my neck. Being in a coma is a weird experience, it is like living in a different world altogether.
"It’s been a long time. I am trying to just get on with it. The illness is getting better slowly. No quick fix."
Asam, who remains paralysed, says he misses the simple things in life. He said: "Of course, you miss everything. Driving the car. Walking to the shop. Going to the barbers. You miss everything."
While he is reassuringly on the mend, he remains far from recovery. His diagnosis has given him a new perspective on life, saying: "You can’t sit and think about everything.
"You just learn to adapt, don’t you? You can’t let your mind take control. You can’t latch onto that.
During his time in hospital Asam has amazingly raised over £3,000 for the NHS by cycling on his wheelchair, but to fully recover his bodily functions he requires physiotherapy, which currently the NHS struggles to provide.
To help the family afford his treatment, they launched a GoFundMe page to help secure private physiotherapy sessions.
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