Woman paralysed from waist down after catching tonsillitis

A woman has been left paralysed from the waist down on her 21st birthday after catching tonsillitis. Samantha Siddell, 22, was confined to a wheelchair after her sore throat brought on a condition called transverse myelitis, which caused a catastrophic inflammation of her spinal chord. Her nervous system was attacked and she was left hospitalised on her 21st birthday. Now back home as she begins to recover, Samantha said: "I know a lot of people end up in hospital on their 21st birthday, but usually it involves alcohol - I was stone cold sober, and terrified. Two days later I was completely paralysed from the waist down - and it was all thanks to tonsillitis. I never would have thought something as routine as tonsillitis would have stopped me walking." Samantha, from Rotheram, was first admitted with a case of tonsillitis which was so severe that it caused her to collapse. She was treated and discharged, but a week after leaving hospital started complaining of strange sensations in her hand. These included pins and needles, an inability to bend her fingers and an aversion to hot and cold temperatures. She said: "It started in my hands - I couldn't bend my fingers. It was a really hot summer and whenever I picked up a cold can in a shop I found it painful. It felt like electric currents shooting through my hand. I went to my doctor and they told me it was probably a trapped nerve and referred me to physiotherapist. By the time I saw the physio the sensation had spread to my legs. The physio was shocked and said it was more serious than a trapped nerve." Medics were baffled by the strange symptoms and initially Samantha was diagnosed with either kidney or liver failure, until tests for both came back negative. Eventually she was referred to a neurologist as doctors thought the strange sensations could have been brought on by depression. She said: "The neurologist saw a large inflammation on my spinal chord but nobody could tell me what it was." On her 21st birthday in August 2012, while out for dinner with her family, Samantha was rushed to accident and emergency at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield when her symptoms took a turn for the worse and she collapsed again. To her horror, she found that by the next day she couldn't feel anything below her waist. She said: "At least when you have the weird sensations you can feel something. I couldn't feel anything and it was unbelievably scary. It's like being on a plane and then suddenly you hear all the loud noises stop - the absence of noise is more terrifying." After she became paralysed Samantha was diagnosed with transverse myelitis - a rare neurological condition inflames the spinal cord, and causes sensory loss in the upper or lower parts of the body. In rare cases it can even cause complete paralysis. Doctors said that in Samantha's case, the shock of her severe tonsillitis effectively reprogrammed her immune system to attack the tissue in her spine. She was hospitalised for the next six months, and since then she has been confined to a wheelchair. But almost two years on, she is now starting to learn to walk again. She said: "I can walk very small distances now - I'm trying to slowly build back up. At one point I was told I would never get back out of bed again. Walking for the first time in nearly two years felt unbelievable - I had been on my back for so long and I never thought I would know what it feels like to stand on two feet again." Samantha won't know for sure if she'll be able to lose her wheelchair until three years after her initial paralysis. But she said: "It is a possibility that I might completely get rid of the chair. But doctors said they have to wait another year to determine what the long-term effects of my condition are."