The wife of Minister of Health Kamil Šašek, Mariana, is struggling with a rare diagnosiswhich turned her life upside down. For the newspaper, she revealed details about her health condition, which had scared her many times.
Šašková currently works as the head of the Office of the President of the National People’s Republic of Slovakia, even though she is privately struggling with a serious illness. “I got an autoimmune neurological disease. It’s very rare, it’s called Guillain-Barré syndrome. It affects maybe one in a hundred thousand people. My whole body was paralyzed except for my head,” she described her difficulties. In the most severe cases, the disease threatens life – paralyzed muscles can stop allowing breathing.
Everything was supposed to start in the summer of 2022, when, according to the information of the portal, she was supposed to stay bedridden patient for two months. It was not certain whether he would get back on his feet or remain in a wheelchair. At that time, the general practitioner should have indicated to her that it could be post-partum depression that is fading away and advised her to see a psychologist.
She and her husband and son Maťko decided to rest for a while and went on vacation to Croatia. However, during her stay, her health suddenly deteriorated. Her immunity began to fail, high temperatures and allergic reactions appeared, she suffered from sore throats and had increasing problems with breathing. “I was walking with a baby in a stroller and suddenly my knees buckled. I fell. It happened again a few hours later,” she explained the situation that scared her.
Then there was an unusual moment in the bathroom. “I saw that I was applying shower gel on myself, but I didn’t feel anything. Like I wasn’t touching the body,” she said, but she also lost control of her legs. “I went to take a step straight, but I took a step to the side. I stopped feeling my body from the neck down.” she explained at the time to .
The clown did not hesitate for a moment and immediately took his wife to the hospital in Zadar, Croatia. Doctors diagnosed her within hours and prepared her for the fact that treatment could require a long hospital stay. “The first thing I thought was: ‘What are the husband and son going to do?’ He was left alone with a child, and in a foreign country, too.” he mentions.
„They connected me to the devices. Every second or third day they filtered my blood through plasmapheresis. In about three hours, a large machine continuously pumps blood from your body, separates it from plasma and pumps plasma from donors into the circulation. A healthy person’s plasma is light, mine was brown like old urine,” explained.
What followed were long weeks of difficult treatment and a struggle for every single movement. Step by step, Mariana learned to sit again, stand up and finally walk – first with the help of a wheelchair. She underwent several hours of rehabilitation every day, which were extremely painful, but necessary. After being transferred to the Bratislava hospital in Kramáry, her husband took care of her intensively, and the rehabilitation continued for months.
The whole treatment process took about eight months. To this day, he cannot fully feel his palms and the fine motor skills of his hands are weakened, but he can function. He regularly goes for infusions so that the body receives enough nutrients. “This diagnosis changed my view of the world and made the family very tough. My husband said that, if nothing else, I could still talk very well,” she added with a smile.
