Daily Times

LISBON: A Portuguese man spent 43 years in a wheelchair because of an incorrect medical diagnosis, finally re-learning to walk only in his fifties, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

When Rufino Borrego was 13, he was diagnosed by a Lisbon hospital as having incurable muscular dystrophy, the Jornal de Noticias reported. He, after that, used a wheelchair to get around for more than four decades, until a neurologist realised 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 to his usual neighbourhood cafe. “We thought it was a miracle,” cafe owner Manuel Melao told the newspaper.

The 61-year-old is now able to live a normal life – requiring only two physiotherapy sessions a year – and insists he harbours no ill-feelings against the hospital that made the original diagnosis.

“I just want to make use of my life,” he said while acknowledging that myasthenia was almost unknown in the medical profession in the 1960s.