This appears to be a duplicate.

James, the emergency department is not the best place to get diagnosis of a neuropathy. A neurologist is required. Did your personal docter send you to emergency?

It is normal to be anxious and depressed. You can help offset this by assuring him that it is treatable and that people do recover from this illness. Although I was never ventilated, I spent four months in hospital and was quadriplegic for a few weeks. Today, although I have some residuals, I walk without assistive devices.

You should get a cippy of Parry and Steinberg, if you can. It is a good overview of the various forms of acquired peripheral neuropathy. It is comforting to know as much about the disorder as you can. There is much advice in that book which you might find helpful.

You also might try to arrange a visit from someone who has recovered from a severe case of GBS. This foundation may be able to help by contacting a representative in your area.

It can be difficult to tell whether GBS is advancing or declining. I was given a five-day course of IvIg in hospital, then sent to rehab. Within a week I was back in hospital because I was getting weaker. After another loading dose, I went to rehab again. I was back in hospital in a week, where I remained for a few weeks before finally starting recovery. This was nobody’s fault — it’s just the nature of the disorder. Sometimes it progresses slowly, sometimes not.

Neuropathies are often difficult to diagnose. The spinal fluid test is used to narrow the possibilities. You should have more confidence in the diagnosis when there are tests to back it up.

As for the disagreement between doctors, the procedure seems a little confused to me. The emergency department is not the best place to get a neurological diagnosis. The function of the ED is to stabilize the patient, treating problems demanding immediate treatment, and diagnose to the extent necessary to decide where to transfer the patient.

The way it was done in my case makes more sense. My family doctor didn’t know what was wrong, but at the second appointment he realized it was neurological because of my loss of knee reflex. Right away he referred me to a neurologist, and he stayed out of it after that. The neurologist put me in hospital the same day he saw me. The diagnosis was not resolved at that point. After the spinal fluid test it was confirmed as likely GBS, but a few weeks later it was changed to CIDP. I was not misdiagnosed. Diagnosis is a process which sometimes takes awhile to arrive at the best conclusion.

wreek, when GBS is active, it is attacking your nerves, leading to progressive weakness. When it is no longer active, your nerves should be healing but there may be residual nerve damage which can cause weakness.

There is no evidence that any vaccine causes GBS, certainly not in the way we normally use the term “cause.” The matter has been studied extensively and continues to be studied and monitored by the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A report on a comprehensive study by Kaiser Permanente is available in these forums, along with reports of other studies. These studies show that the incidence of GBS is the same for those who have been vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated.

That the incidence is the same does not mean, however, that a vaccination cannot be a factor. It is possible that a vaccine can be a trigger (not a “cause”) in a few cases, but the number of such cases must be exceedingly small or studies would be able to show the connection.

There is one known trigger of GBS: Campylobacter jejuni, a pathogen found in poultry and in the environment. There may be many different infections which can trigger GBS, and a person may be susceptible to only one. Most people, of course, are not susceptible at all. The “cause” of GBS is in your own makeup.

As for the flu vaccine, I had a very serious case of CIDP never having had a flu vacine and having had no vaccines at all for several years before getting the disease. Since recovering, I now get vaccinated for influenza every year, because I know that is better protection for my health than avoiding vaccines.