Joe Sattlemayer
Sacramento, CA
Guillian Barri Syndrome (GBS)

It all started in 1986, when I had the flu for 5 days. At the time I was building houses with my son-in-law and had helped with wielding an iron gate. I mentioned to him, that my hands felt numb and that the tips of my fingers were tingling. That night while watching the late night news, I fell asleep on the couch. My wife woke me in the morning, to tell me to watch our sons; she had some gardening to do.

I couldn’t move my hands when I tried pushing myself off the couch. The rest of my body was moveable. At first, I figured they were numb from sleeping on them. When after awhile, I still couldn’t move them, I started panicking and got scared. We called our son, he carried me to the car, since I couldn’t stand or walk by myself. And they took me to the emergency.

At the hospital they checked my heart and did some blood test; all showed normal. The next they did a spinal cord tap and diagnosed me with Guillian barri syndrome (GBS). For the next three days I got worse and worse; I couldn’t breathe by myself; they had to insert a tube in my throat for breathing and insert a catheter in my jugular vein. I can’t really remember much of the first three months. I was not very aware of much during these three months with brain foggy and eyesight blurry. I had such excessive pain in my joints and some days on the bottom of my hands and feet. They injected me with morphine every two hours and it still was not enough, so they had to give me other pain medication in between. After three months I got better that I was able to breathe on my own and get around in a wheel chair. Life was miserable. I was hoping any physician would have enough sympathy to do a mercy killing. But, life went on with daily suffering. The worse had not stopped yet. In Sept 1992 I was hospitalizes for 4 months, due to severe ruptured ulcers, with several blood transfusions. July 1993, the time I felt that my life had finally come to an end. A friend of my wife, told us about the Sierra Integrative Medical Center (SIMC).

I arrived at the SIMC in a wheelchair, I was given a thorough examination and laboratory testing, and they were looking to treat the cause of my disease, not just to treat the symptom. My blood test results showed I was positive with Lyme disease. After a period of 2 months of treatment I was able to walk with crutches and now I can walk normally. All of the GBS symptoms subsided, but I still come back periodically for treatments; just for prevention and to keep my body running healthy. I’m able to walk by myself, do farming, gardening and all other daily activities, as a normal person.

I consider the doctors and staff at the SIMC the best in the world. They are the most committed and professional personal in medicine. They are very dear friends. I feel very fortunate to be associated with them. I never miss an opportunity to talk about the SIMC to anybody to cares to listen. God bless and good luck.