On the eve of our daughter's 5th birthday she was afflicted with a sever on set of Miller-Fisher, a variant of Guillian Barre Syndrome. The few weeks leading up to that terrible day were like any other. Normal activity's you might experience, work, play, helping the kid's with homework, etc.

My daughter Lisa had been complaining about pain in her hands and in her feet and legs but we just told her it was probably growing pains. Now of course I'm no doctor but that's what my parents told me when I was kid so I was just brought up to think that way. Boy was I wrong that time, absolutely missed by a mile. About three days before October 31st, that day being the eve of her birthday she had come down with a cold that seemed to really have hit her hard that day.

Weakness set in and she could barely hold her head up so I thought to run her a bath thinking really warm water would help loosen her congestion. As I said before she could not hold her head up and I noticed her lips were a light blue color that's when I got scared and we rushed her to the hospital. Lisa was moved to an emergency trauma treatment room there they tried to stabilize her breathing. At this point a decision was made to intubate her. Once intubated Lisa was air lifted to D.H.M.C in Hanover, NH.

The doctors ran a multitude of test's but could not figure out what was wrong with our daughter. By day four the numbness had turned to paralysis, my daughter was completely paralyzed. Talk about desperate, I did not know what to do. I was scared and angry at the same time, very frustrating situation. One of the doctors Dr. Filliano was a neurosurgeon very accomplished in his abilities.

Dr. Filliano came into the room where we were and told us he had diagnosed her condition as Guillian Barre Syndrome with a Miller-Fisher variant. Never heard of it before that day and frankly never want to hear of it again. My daughter Lisa had to under go a tracheotomy and was put on a ventilator and was being fed through a feeding tube attached to her stomach. Through all this she was sedated with Fentanyl, Versed, Ativan and Morphine.

Some of the drugs they had given her were to help her not have much of a memory of the ordeal, I mean if you were five years old that would be one scary ride. She could not move or speak sometimes you could see little tears roll down her cheeks, that was the hardest part. Not being able to do anything but wait.

Well it seems this disease is related to the common cold germ, that's right the common cold. It depends on how your nervous system reacts to the on set. And according to medical journals it attacks one in every hundred people in the world. Growing pains maybe, maybe not.

Anyway after 45 days in intensive care little Lisa was released from the hospital in a wheelchair she could sit up but was not able to eat on her own for several more weeks and eventually had the breathing tube removed. Today Lisa is ten years old and counting and 99% healed. She can run and play but still has pain from the nerves healing but thank God she's alive. So when your kids complain of leg pain or pain in their hands you might want to listen close and keep this in mind. "What if it isn't just growing pain?"