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\n“Never judge a book by its cover” is something we hear often growing up, and it couldn’t be truer. Looking at 24-year-old Shahaf, you’d see a successful new mom, married to the love of her life. Look a little harder, though, and you’ll see a woman whose life was torn apart when she started feeling numbness while she was pregnant. Look even more closely, and you’ll see a woman who had everything taken away from her, and who’s had to scratch and claw all the way to get it back.
\n[post_page_title]A happy life thrown into turmoil[\/post_page_title]
\nShahaf Gershon is a 24-year-old new mom from Israel. She seems to have the perfect life – meeting the love of her life at just 18, having a beautiful baby boy, and running a fashion design firm that’s all her own.
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\nRewinding back to the beginning, however, she started small. Literally. The youngest daughter of older parents, she was drawn to fashion for as long as she could remember. Back then, she never could’ve imagined all the good that awaited her. Or the bad. And there’d be a lot of both.
\n[post_page_title]Making her first steps in fashion design[\/post_page_title]
\nSince she always loved fashion, and would adorn her mother’s clothes with crystals even as a kid, Shahaf planned on studying fashion. Unfortunately, something got in the way – success.
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\nAt 18, she borrowed a dress from a friend, but it didn’t fit het so she went about creating her own. When she put pictures of it online, word got around, and soon she was swamped with requests from other girls to design something for them. Before long, it dawned on her that she could actually make a living out it.
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\n[post_page_title]Meeting the man of her dreams[\/post_page_title]
\nA lot clicked for her when she was 18. That was also the age she met her future husband, Nir. He was her first boyfriend, and they met by pure chance.
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\nOne day Shahaf wanted a Coke, so she popped over to the corner store located under her dad’s business. That store was owned by Nir’s parents, and he just happened to be there. They got to talking, and hit it off. When she was 21, he popped the question at the Eiffel Tower. A year later they were married.
\n[post_page_title]A first unpleasant surprise[\/post_page_title]
\nUp to now, it might seem like Shahaf’s life had went about as well as it could have. It was just one incredibly happy coincidence after another.
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\nWhen she got back from a fashion photoshoot in South Africa, life threw her the first of what would be many curveballs – she discovered she was pregnant. It was unplanned, and actually an unpleasant surprise. “If I have a kid now,” she thought, “it would just bring my business to a screeching halt.” In retrospect, however, that baby may have saved her life.
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\n[post_page_title]Starting to feel unwell[\/post_page_title]
\nInitially, the pregnancy came along fine. Normal morning sickness aside, Shahaf went back to work, worked out, and was happy as a clam. Then, during the eighth month of pregnancy, her life was thrown for a loop.
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\nShe was standing in line in a store and suddenly felt like she was “standing on air.” She called her husband in a panic and asked him to come get her. He did, and took her home. She refused to go to a hospital, and everyone assured her it was probably nothing.
\n[post_page_title]’Just swelling'[\/post_page_title]
\nEventually, when the feeling of numbness in her legs wasn’t going away, she gave in and went to the doctor, an orthopaedic specialist. He asked her to wiggle her toes, and she couldn’t.
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\nHe then asked her to lift her leg, and she couldn’t do that either. Finally, he asked her to push her leg forward like she’s stepping on a gas pedal – and she couldn’t. Somehow, at the end of the checkup, the doctor told her she was fine. He believed it was just swelling related to the pregnancy.
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\n[post_page_title]A traumatic birth[\/post_page_title]
\nThe numbness stayed with her all the way to her water breaking. Childbirth was extremely difficult – she was injected with epidural but since she was already numb, it only made her feel completely paralyzed.
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\nShe couldn’t even push during birth. For hours on end, nothing was happening, and while the baby started crowning, he seemed to be stuck. Eventually, by pushing down on her stomach, the baby finally emerged. Shahaf was so exhausted by the end of it that she didn’t even want to hold her new son – just sleep.
\n[post_page_title]Not strong enough to be a mother[\/post_page_title]
\nHoping that maybe her baby was pressing down on some nerve, she thought she would find relief after giving birth; she didn’t. Shahaf suffered from terrible back pain and still couldn’t move her legs.
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\nDoctors told her it was because the epidural was still circulating around her body, but it wasn’t getting any better. Since she couldn’t care for the baby, the entire family moved to her mother’s house. She found herself unable to function, and so her husband and mom took charge of caring for the newborn.
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\n[post_page_title]Doctors can’t help[\/post_page_title]
\nThree months later, Shahaf was still feeling awful. She had no choice but to start seeing doctors again, and went to a neurologist who sent her to do an EMG, which checks muscles by stimulating them with electric pulses.
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\nShe couldn’t even feel the pulses, but somehow the test came back clean. Six months after giving birth, she’d had enough and went to the ER. “I wanted to be tested thoroughly and properly for once, so I could know what was wrong,” she said. The tests all came back clean.
\n[post_page_title]A fateful meeting[\/post_page_title]
\nSince no one could figure out what was wrong with her, eventually Shahaf and her family went back to their normal lives. Fate, however, once again came calling.
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\nA client came into her studio one day, and noticed her self-described “duck waddle.” She asked about it, and Shahaf replied it was epidural in her legs. The client said it couldn’t be that. It just so happened that she worked at a medical imaging institute, and made an appointment for her to come in and have some tests done.
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\n[post_page_title]The crushing discovery[\/post_page_title]
\nAt the end of her rope, Shahaf came in for a test at the client’s institute the very next day. Two weeks later, the results came in. “The client told me I had a two-inch tumor in my back,” she revealed, “and it was bleeding.”
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