A prisoner in his own body

Former East Rockaway restauranteur on the road to recovery after being stricken with autoimmune disease

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After being stricken with a disease that left his body completely paralyzed, and after spending the past two and a half years in three hospitals, East Rockaway resident Charlie Lunenfeld, 51, says that although he misses his old life, he’s on the mend and ready to reclaim his place in the world — literally one very slow step at a time.

“I’m ready for this part of the journey,” said the former owner of the popular East Rockaway eatery the Fishery (now under new ownership as Reel). “I miss my freedom, like getting into a car to go where I want to go … doing the things I used to be able to do … but I’m getting there very slowly.”

In July 2012, Lunenfeld recalled, he felt like he was getting a chest cold when he was exiting a pool with his 5-year-old son. “Then it got worse and worse, with pains in my stomach and chest,” he said. “By the evening, my hands and feet began to go numb.

“By the next morning, I started to become paralyzed, and needed help breathing,” he recounted. “Within 24 hours I was completely paralyzed, on a ventilator, with a tube up my nose … I couldn’t talk, but I could hear and think. They explained what I had, and it was the last thing I really remember for quite a while.”

Lunenfeld’s diagnosis was Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the nervous system. Lunenfeld was, in effect, a prisoner in his own body.

“They told me it was the worst case they’d ever seen,” he said, “and that they really didn’t know what causes the syndrome — but something compromises the immune system, like bacteria or a virus. With me, they think it was stress-related.”

In most cases, a person with GBS gets better within a year, and only 20 percent of those who develop the illness have to go on a ventilator, as Lunenfeld did. But his case was not typical.

After a short stay at South Nassau Communities Hospital, he was moved to Columbia Presbyterian in New York City. After a month there, he was transferred to Gaylord Hospital, an acute long-term care facility in Wallingford, Conn., which specializes in the type of therapy Lunenfeld needed. It was there that he opened his eyes for the first time since he was overcome with paralysis.

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