Determination central to journey back to health

The Press

ONE GOAL ACHIEVED: For Neelusha Memon climbing Mt Aspiring in January was the realisation of a lifelong goal as well as the stepping stone to further achievements. She refuses to put limits on herself.

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Nine years ago, Neelusha Memon awoke and could not roll over.

To her horror, the 16-year-old realised she could not move, speak or swallow.

The Christchurch teenager had not woken from a night's sleep, but from a three-month coma.

Doctors had told her parents she would most likely never wake up, or would be "a vegetable".

However, Memon defied the expectations and in January completed a lifelong ambition.

Despite balance and co-ordination problems and only 30 per cent vision, Memon climbed Mt Aspiring. The 25-year-old woman now plans to tackle Mt Cook.

At 16, Memon suffered a severe brain injury after developing acute disseminated encephalomyelitis – an inflammation of the brain or spinal cord – after a snowboarding trip.

She had been admitted to hospital with flu-like symptoms when, that evening, her parents received a phone call to say her condition was deteriorating.

Her mother rushed in and held her hand, and Memon responded. That was the then teenager's last contact with the world for three months as she lapsed into a coma.

Her body had turned against itself, attacking healthy cells in the belief they were bad.

She recalled waking in Burwood Hospital and thinking she wanted to roll over.

"I was sending thoughts to my brain saying 'turn over' and nothing happened and I was thinking, 'that's weird'," she said.

"I couldn't walk or talk, move my muscles, swallow – I was like a baby."

Months of "harsh" rehabilitation followed.

"It's not something I would ever wish on anyone because you have got to come to terms with the fact that you can't do it.

"One minute you're a perfectly able fit 16-year-old and a good snowboarder, then, suddenly, you are nothing."

Memon remembers screaming with pain while tied to a walking frame and no sound coming out.

It was her determination to push herself that drove her recovery, she said.

"At first, I hated my life and what it had become. I had no motivation to try and get better, but as I started to make gains I just got more and more keen and pushed harder and harder."

Now a disability awareness and education worker with CCS Disability Action, Memon said the greatest barrier to disabled people reaching their potential was attitude.

"I think this is as far as I can rehabilitate, but then I do things like climbing a mountain and because of new challenges it presents me, I learn different things," she said.

"My body has really astounded me. I don't put limitations on my life now, I don't say `I won't get my sight back', because it might happen."

- © Fairfax NZ News