Sign up to our free Living Well email for advice on living a happier, healthier and longer lifeLive your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletterLive your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletterA teenager who was told she might never walk again after a rare condition left her paralysed overnight has defied medical expectations to return to the stage.Jessie-Lou Harvie, 14, from Blantyre, Lanarkshire, was diagnosed with transverse myelitis – a “one-in-a-million” spinal cord condition – in March 2024 after suddenly feeling weak and unable to move her legs. Her mother, Nicola Harvie, described the doctors’ prognosis for her “healthy” daughter as “the worst thing you can hear as a parent”.But having already racked up credits in the 2021/22 UK tour of Les Miserables, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Scottish Opera, and as Charlie Bucket in the UK and Ireland tour of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Jessie-Lou was determined to return to performing.Transferred to the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, she underwent specialist rehabilitation. She gradually learned to walk again, defying doctors’ expectations, and rediscovered her voice singing in the facility’s gardens. Her professional return to the stage came in November 2024.open image in galleryWhen Jessie-Lou was diagnosed, she said ‘at first, I don’t even think I really understood it’“Seeing her back on the stage professionally, it made me think, ‘well, the industry still has room for her’,” Ms Harvie said.“It took us six or seven years of IVF to have Jessie-Lou. To be told she wouldn’t walk again was devastating, but I refused to let anyone limit my daughter.”On the morning of 10 February 2024, Jessie-Lou started feeling unwell.“I woke up and felt really weak in my legs,” she said.“I tried to stand and walk to the bathroom, but I was so weak and confused about what was happening.“I went back to bed for half an hour, and that was when I became completely paralysed from the chest down. I just couldn’t really move at all.”open image in galleryJessie-Lou had to learn to walk again with the help of specialistsHer father Tony carried her to the car and her parents rushed her to A&E, where she was immediately transferred by ambulance to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.There, Ms Harvie said, doctors told them that the teenager might never walk again.Jessie-Lou said: “At first, I don’t even think I really understood it.“I thought everything would be fine, I just thought I’d just go back to normal after a few weeks.”After weeks of tests in Glasgow and a case conference with Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, Jessie-Lou was diagnosed with transverse myelitis – a rare neurological condition which causes inflammation of the spinal cord – in March 2024.According to National Institutes of Health, it is considered rare, with a prevalence of one to eight people per million.open image in galleryJessie-Lou with her friend Teddy in Horatio’s Garden Stoke MandevilleBy the end of the 12 weeks in Glasgow, Jessie-Lou was mainly using a wheelchair and in physio was using a zimmerframe to take assisted steps.She was transferred to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, home to the National Spinal Injuries Centre, in May 2024.There, she had the opportunity to play group wheelchair sports, with up to four hours of activity in a day.She also had physio sessions in an accessible gym, with a specially adapted treadmill to reduce weight-bearing, and was also introduced to functional electronic stimulation.There were music, photography and art workshops in the garden of the facility, and she was able to go to school within the hospital, alongside other students.open image in galleryJessie-Lou’s advice is: ‘Don’t give up’They even provided lessons on how to adapt to life with a spinal cord injury.The facility’s dedicated outside space for people with spinal injuries, called Horatio’s Garden, became a lifeline for both mother and daughter. They played board games together and Jessie-Lou sang there.To others facing their own recovery challenges, Jessie-Lou said: “Don’t give up.“Do your exercises, do your physio, because that’s the thing that will help the most out of all of it.”Jessie-Lou was released home from Stoke Mandeville in June 2024. However, she will continue to return to the hospital every year for a week until she is 19 for a week-long check-up and support appointment.She is now back at school and can walk independently, though she still has a limp, right-side weakness and struggles with foot drop – where it is difficult to lift or move your foot and toes.open image in galleryJessie-Lou performing in Charlie and The Chocolate FactoryAround her studies, Jessie-Lou auditioned for the part of Winona in the world premiere of Wild Rose at the Lyceum Theatre in November 2024 – and she was “surprised” to get the role.“Singing and acting is really my main thing, so I thought, ‘I’m going to do really well with that’,” she said.“But with the dancing, I thought, ‘I’m going to try my best and do what I can’.”Her family has received partial funding from Spinal Injuries Scotland for a £6,000 Bioness L300 Go device, which will be fitted this month – it wraps around the leg and uses functional electrical stimulation to help people with mobility issues caused by nerve or spinal cord injury, stroke, or multiple sclerosis.They are hopeful it will improve Jessie-Lou’s mobility by helping with her foot drop.Regardless of whether she returns to full mobility or not, Jessie-Lou hopes to defy expectations once more – by one day playing Elphaba in Wicked.
Source link
Transverse myelitis: ‘Healthy’ teen paralysed overnight by ‘one-in-a-million’ disorder
