One day she was 17 years old, lived at home with mum and dad, and was an active gymnast and trainer. Within a day, Kjerstin Hogstad’s life was turned upside down. Five years later, she still doesn’t know why it happened. It has not been possible to establish whether the paralysis is due to the examination or whether there may be other causes. It started with a finger that didn’t fully recover after a fall on the trampoline in 2016. She was examined several times, both at the hospital in Skien and at the National Hospital. Kjerstin Hogstad was an active gymnast and gymnastics coach for many years. The picture was taken in the summer of 2018 when Kjerstin was 17 years old. Photo: PRIVATE At Rikshospitalet they wanted to investigate whether Kjerstin Hogstad could have underlying illnesses. In 2018, she was asked to come for more tests, including a spinal cord test. – I went into Rikshospitalet to have an examination, and came out again unable to walk, she says. She was completely unprepared for it to end so dramatically. – It came completely out of the blue, and was a shock for both me and my family. Unable to move home After a short time she was completely dependent on a wheelchair. She could not live at home with her parents. The house with stairs, high thresholds and a small kitchen was no longer possible for a wheelchair user to live in. After three months in hospital, she was moved to a health center in her home municipality of Skien. She lived there for 13 months, together with mostly only older people. – I went from being a gymnastics coach and active every day, to sitting in an institution and not having what I wanted, she says. Thinks it is important that children ask. Now she owns her own apartment with round-the-clock staffing. She also has good help from a user-controlled personal assistant (BPA). Kjerstin Hogstad can live like a 22-year-old with help from BPA assistants. Lene Lunde Lauvås is one of them. Photo: VIGDIS HELLA / news – Thanks to that scheme, I have the opportunity to live like a 22-year-old and not be confined to my own life. I am very happy about that, she says. Kjerstin notices that children can look at her when she drives around in her wheelchair. She doesn’t care about that. She believes there will be less prejudice if they get answers to their questions. That is why she has become involved in the voluntary organization “Let the children ask”. She recently became deputy head there. Youth and young adults in the organization go out to schools to talk about living with a disability. – They ask without a filter, and that’s good, she says. Kjerstin Hogstad believes it is important that children get the answers they need about what it is like to live with a disability. Therefore, she hopes more schools will use the Let the children ask offer. Photo: VIGDIS HELLA / news – I enjoy talking to children. That way I can still do some of what I did before, she says. She hopes more schools will accept the offer. – Mostly we don’t get answers back from the schools. But the schools that accept the offer are very satisfied. It means a lot to me, she says. These are some of the questions children ask her: Can you bathe? Yes, then I use a wheelchair made of plastic. In the water it is easier to move because you become weightless. It also allows me to walk a bit. Which toothbrush do you use? I really like pink. That’s why I chose a toothbrush with that color. What did you eat for dinner yesterday? Yesterday I had a visitor, and then we ordered a pizza. How fast can the wheelchair go? The electric wheelchair I have now can go 10 km/h . It’s very fast. It can be a little difficult to drive at first, but now I’m used to using it. Not unusual, Rikshospitalet cannot comment on the case of Kjerstin Hogstad. But there are conditions where the body reacts with dysfunction, without damage to the nervous system, explains Birgitte Boye. Professor and senior physician at Oslo University Hospital, Birgitte Boye, says that some people can train their bodies to function again, but for others the damage lasts a lifetime. Photo: Per M Didriksen / Per M Didriksen She is a professor and senior physician, and heads the department of psychosomatics and CL psychiatry for adults at Oslo University Hospital. The condition is called functional neurological disorder and is quite common, she points out. – It could be, for example, that you become paralyzed or numb in a part of the body, such as an arm or a leg, or end up in a wheelchair. It can be all varieties, says Boye. If you examine the central nervous system and the brain, you will not find an injury, as is found in stroke or MS, she explains. – We do not know how it occurs. For some, it is possible to train the body to function again, while for others the damage can last a lifetime, she says.
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Kjerstin became a wheelchair user at 17 – wants children to ask – news Vestfold and Telemark – Local news, TV and radio
