LISBON (Web Desk) – A Portuguese man spent 43 years in a wheelchair because of a mistaken medical diagnosis, finally re-learning to walk only in his fifties as a normal man.
Rufino Borrego was 13 when he was diagnosed by a Lisbon hospital as having incurable muscular dystrophy.
After that he used a wheelchair to get around for more than four decades until a neurologist realized in 2010 that he in fact suffered from a different disease that weakens the muscles, myasthenia.
The rare disease can be treated simply by taking asthma medication and just a year after his new diagnosis, Borrego was able to walk for the first time. Those who watched him, termed it a miracle.
Now aged 61, Borrego is able to live a normal life, requiring only two physiotherapy sessions a year.
He insists he harbors no ill-feelings against the hospital that made the original diagnosis, acknowledging that myasthenia was almost unknown in the medical profession in the 1960s.
“I just want to make use of my life,” he said.
