For Jane Benningfield, the initials GBS stand for two things.

One, is Get Better Slowly.

“When your body tells you it’s tired, you’d better heed. You have to do a little at a time, because it can set you back,” she said as she held on to her walker and eased herself down on a couch in her Bowling Green home recently. “That’s hard for me – trying to learn how to pace myself. I’m blessed to be at the point I am right now.”

The second, is her reason for getting better slowly.

Benningfield has Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

“It’s an autoimmune disease that affects the peripheral nerves,” she said. “You can end up paralyzed, but you can recover from it.”

Before she became ill, Benningfield enjoyed her career as a prenatal home visiting nurse for the Barren River District Health Department in Warren and Simpson counties. She had worked there for nearly nine years – 6 1/2 of those in her current position and two years as a nurse in the health department.

“I’d be in the office for about three or four hours and then take (Women, Infants and Children program) vouchers to mothers,” she said, smiling as she thought of her job visiting mothers. “It saves the moms from having to run to the health department. We try to do anything to keep them from having to run back out after they have a baby.”

During the visits, Benningfield would check the mothers and the newborns. Sometimes she would find health issues in the mothers needed immediate attention.

“You’d be surprised how often I ran into moms with high blood pressure,” she said. “Sometimes it’s symptomatic, sometimes it’s not. The first time they see a doctor probably wouldn’t be until six weeks postpartum.”

Benningfield would take time to lessen fears of new parents. If she couldn’t answer questions, she would point them in the direction of another health professional who could.

“It might be their first baby and they don’t have family in town. They may have a million questions,” she said. “The baby might not be tolerating formula and spitting up, or they may need breastfeeding tips. It’s just those two or three words that give them reassurance. My mother did that for me. She was still living when I had my kids.”

Benningfield knew she wanted to be a nurse from the time she was a teenager growing up in Hodgenville.

“I have a lot of nurses in my family – an aunt, my oldest daughter, my sister-in-law and her daughter,” she said. “I always wanted to be able to take care of people. I wanted to be the type of nurse who had that little extra time to try and really care for them. You can see the compassion.”

She knew she would prefer to work in a health department setting rather than at a hospital.

“You’re not in 12-hour shifts that you’d have at a hospital,” she said.

Benningfield began attending Western Kentucky University after she married and started a family. She received an associate’s degree in nursing

“I had been a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “I waited until my youngest child was in kindergarten before I started school.”

Fast forward to May. One day, Benningfield began feeling tingling and numbness in her hands. The next day, she felt the same sensations in her feet. Soon she was feeling severe pain in her upper arms. Then the problems spread to her legs.

“I was getting weak here at home and starting to fall,” she said. “I was paralyzed in my arms before I went to the hospital. Paralysis set in the day after I got to the hospital.”

Her husband, Randy Benningfield, said Guillain-Barre Syndrome came as a total shock because his wife had been the picture of good health.

“She was going to the gym three times a week. One day she was walking around like you and I, and the next she could only move her neck,” he said. “It scared us half to death. This is a very scary disease. Don’t take your health for granted.”

Immediate treatment for the disorder was necessary, Benningfield said.

“The sooner you get treatment, the quicker your strength comes back,” she said. “It can paralyze your diaphragm. Seventy percent of patients end up on a ventilator.”

Benningfield wasn’t one of the patients who needed one, though, Randy Benningfield said.

“Her breathing got shallow,” he said. “They thought they would have to put her on a ventilator.”

Benningfield remembered struggling to communicate.

“I could say only five words to somebody who came into the room and it wore me out,” she said.

But she persevered. Benningfield spent four days at Greenview Regional Hospital, three weeks at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and about two months at Southern Kentucky Rehabilitation Hospital.

“When I got to (Sky Rehab), I could move my neck 20 percent this way and that way and do my fingers,” she said as she turned her head slightly one way and then the other. “Two weeks before I left, I was on a walker.”

Benningfield continues to get stronger each day. She gets physical therapy at Paul Gray Physical Therapy three days a week between appointments with doctors. She said her legs are getting stronger, but she has no reflexes from her knees down. She still has limited movement in her right arm. Her feet, ankles and toes still have numb, tingling and burning sensations, but her doctor at Vanderbilt told her that they would be the last to return to normal, she said.

“I feel like I have a sense of security to stand up and walk with my walker,” she said. “For anything lengthy, I still need to use my wheelchair.”

She credits prayer and having a support system with helping her along the road to recovery. For Benningfield, her support system included her husband and their children – Leslie, 25, Caleb, 23, and Lauren, 19 – as well as other family members, co-workers, friends and her church family at Oakland Baptist Church.

“There was always someone with me. That means so much. I didn’t want to be by myself,” she said. “I always look at the positive. You fare better if you can look at the positive through everything.”

Benningfield said she appreciates the visits, calls and cards from her co-workers. Some of them donated sick days so that she could spend time getting well. She is looking forward to the day she can return to work.

“Sure I will,” she said with a wide smile when asked if she would return to her job at the health department. “I just don’t know when that will be.”