Amy Pohl says her life completely changed in late 2017 after “a doctor wrongly reused” a needle on her during an IV, leading to a slew of health issues, including a severe infection, nerve damage in her hand, and eventually, a complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) diagnosis.

Pohl, 33, tells PEOPLE that “because of the amount of pain I was in with my hand,” it was “hard to notice” she was developing issues with her legs “at first.”

“It wasn’t until I lost it all that, when my family and I looked back, that things began to make sense. Like painful pins and needles, falling over, difficulty balancing, weakness, memory struggles, extreme fatigue, etc., we just thought it was my CRPS or side effects of the medication I was taking,” Pohl shares.

In the fall of 2018, Pohl says she lost her ability to walk, and her mental health started to take a turn for the worse.

Amy Pohl.Courtesy of Amy Pohl
“I didn’t know what my future would be, and I was really struggling mentally as well,” she shares. “Like, I didn’t think I had a future. I had always planned to be a primary school teacher. I had this, like, five-year plan, and all of a sudden it’s out the window.”

When her doctor looked at her records, she remembers him saying, “Oh, you have been depressed recently,” and then giving her “an on-the-spot diagnosis of functional neurological disorder (FND), without all the necessary scans to rule out anything else that could be going on.”

Functional neurologic disorder (FND) refers to a neurological condition caused by changes in how brain networks function, which can result in seizure-like episodes, movement problems, pain, and other symptoms, per the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

According to Pohl, the doctor explained that her “brain wasn’t communicating with my legs correctly.”

“He wrote out a website on a piece of paper, wished me luck with my recovery and then left. I was relieved that I was going to get better and would be back on my feet after some rehab… of course, this wouldn’t be the case as I didn’t actually have FND,” Pohl shares.

In a video shared to her Instagram page, Pohl shares that in 2022, she paid to see a private specialist and started getting answers “that made sense.”

“For the first time, I was able to sit down with a doctor for longer than a five-minute appointment. He listened, he did tests, and those tests showed that something more was going on. His physical examination revealed that the diagnosis I had then didn’t fit my symptoms and what he was seeing.”

Her blood results revealed that she had a severe vitamin B12 deficiency, and he contacted her doctor to say that she needed an emergency MRI, which no other doctors had ordered up to that point.

Pohl’s current diagnoses include CRPS, thoracic spinal degeneration and damage caused by prolonged vitamin B12 deficiency, which has left her paralyzed from around her belly button down, making her a full-time wheelchair user.

She also has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder, which she says “affects my body’s ability to absorb vitamin B12 and other essential vitamins and minerals, as well as weakening my dura, leading to spontaneous dural tears.”

She says that “while these are lifelong conditions, I continue to focus on rehabilitation, maintaining my strength, maximising the function I have and living as independently and fully as possible.”

However, she emphasizes that her paralysis “wasn’t due” to the infection caused by the reused needle, which led to the nerve damage in her hand. While people often assume the two are related, she notes that
people “can have more than one disability, and it’s not always the most obvious thing.”

“I think I’m a very unlucky person,” she laughs. “It was just that I ended up not being able to absorb B12 the way that bodies are supposed to absorb it. So it got very low, and it was missed for a long time, and then when we did find out, the damage was already done.”

Pohl has been sharing her story on TikTok and Instagram to raise awareness and show that she is “just a normal person.”

Amy Pohl.Courtesy of Amy Pohl
“I live a great life now. I lived a great life before I was disabled, but I also live a great life now,” she emphasizes. “When I first became disabled, I didn’t think that I had a future. So I came up with this saying that I say to myself, and I still say to myself every morning, ‘Stop fighting yourself, start fighting for yourself.’ ”

“I could be depressed lying in bed, wishing that I wasn’t disabled every single day, but that isn’t gonna change anything,” Pohl continues. “So I may as well go out and live my life to the best that I can. I’ve been water skiing. I’ve been skiing. I’ve been on quad bikes and horse riding. I’ve been ziplining and sailing in a wheelchair. All these different things. There are things that I never thought would be possible again, and they are; you just have to find another way of doing it.”

She raises awareness about disability rights and advocacy online, but also likes to have fun and enjoy herself. She often posts videos showing her day-to-day routines to show people the realities of being a full-time wheelchair user.

“I don’t feel disabled. Like, when I’m in my house, when I wake up in the morning, go about my day inside my house, I don’t feel disabled, whether that’s because of my hand or because I’m paralyzed,” she shares. “What makes me feel disabled is when I go outside the house.”

Sources: https://people.com/woman-still-loving-life-after-becoming-paralyzed-waist-down-exclusive-12033971