After five months of battling a brain-eating amoeba, a Maryland man finally has his heath back after it left him in a coma as well as temporarily paralyzed him from the neck down.
Ryan Perry was jet skiing with his family on the Susquehanna in early May when he quickly began having severe headaches and nausea.
Perry was hospitalized on May 11, when he began to hallucinate while having “severe tremors, weakness of lower extremities, and his eyes drifted up to the ceiling the majority of his day.”
He was then transferred to the University of Medical Center, where his condition worsened and was then placed in a medically induced coma.
“I tested negative for everything they could test me for,” Perry shared with WMAR2News.com. “Finally, what they determined is water went up my nose when I was jet-skiing. It attacked my brain, traveled to my spinal cord and paralyzed me from the neck down.”
Perry then spent months in the hospital prior to being transferred to an in-patient rehabilitation facility where he worked on gaining back his strength and has even regained the ability to stand.
Perry even began to drive again and was able to return to work according to his sister, but continues with out-patient therapy.
“Initially it was, ‘We’re not sure if I’m ever going to be able to walk again,’ he shared. “I had a neurology appointment at the University of Maryland and my neurologist told me she can’t believe the progress I’ve made and she thinks I will make if not a full recovery pretty close to it.”
We are not crying, YOU’RE crying!