If you follow the Instagram art scene, you’ve probably heard ofMari Andrew.
Today, she’s amassed more than 475,000 followers thanks to her simple yet powerful illustrations.
“The symptoms felt like something was really wrong with my limbs,” Andrew tells SELF.
Instagram @bymariandrew
“Both my legs and hands felt really heavy.
I could barely draw, and it just felt like I couldnt control my hands.
I couldnt walk very well, either.”
Mari Andrew in Spain, before she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Photo courtesy of Mari Andrew
But as her symptoms worsened and she became weaker, Andrew knew it was more than that.
“I couldn’t even get up,” she says.
“I told someone I needed to go to the hospital.”
Andrew during her recovery in a hospital in Spain. Photo courtesy of Mari Andrew
Andrew was taken to a small hospital in the tiny Spanish town, where doctors puzzled over her symptoms.
“What I had was a total mystery to everyone in the hospital,” she says.
“It was pretty isolating.”
Andrew enjoying Portgual while she still recovers from Guillain-Barré syndrome. Photo courtesy of Mari Andrew
After a day, the small hospital sent her in an ambulance to a Granada hospital.
On average, GBS will affectone in 100,000 people.
Andrew says the doctors were unable to determine what caused her to get GBS.
Her challenging symptoms followed a typical pattern for GBS.
A person then will start to feel weakas Andrew didand might struggle to walk without tripping over their feet.
The somewhat good news: The disorder gets worsebut then it levels off.
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As Andrew lost her ability to move, she feared large parts of her identity might never return.
“When I was paralyzed, it was this struggle of, ‘Am I still an artist?
Am I still a writer?’
I had no way of doing those things.
I didn’t have any of those identities,” she says.
She was also frustrated that she couldn’t dance, a hobby she practiced almost daily while abroad.
“It was like I could tell the nurse Im a dancer, but could I dance now?
And first, I wanted to identify again as someone who could walk.”
In the hospital, Andrew received a treatment called immunoglobulin therapy through an IV for five days.
With immunoglobulin therapy, patients are given healthy antibodies from blood donors intravenously.
But it all depends on the severity of someone’s symptoms.
For others, it’s much more serious.
“With those cases it can take months and months to recover.”
“I actually had a really remarkably fast recovery,” she says.
“There were people in the hospital with the same disorder that had been there for months.
Within a month, I was able to walk again.
It felt so slow to me, but every day I started noticing improvements.”
“But it was so, so nice to not feel like I had failed myself.”
Her drawing skills, however, came back relatively easy with some practice.
“For some reason, drawing wasnt hard for me to get back into,” she says.
But I know that Im not."
Her followers have showered her with encouragement since hearing about her illness.
“It looks so hard from the outside, it must be that much more on the inside!
Wishing you a speedy recovery!”
“Im used to getting messages from people going through breakups or grief,” she says.
“Now, I’m getting so many messages from people going through health issues.
Thats been both really comforting to me personally and also encouraging to me to keep making art.”
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