Man learns to walk after spending 43 years in wheelchair due to faulty diagnoses

When Rufino Borrego was 13, he was diagnosed by a Lisbon hospital as having incurable muscular dystrophy.

Lisbon: A Portuguese man spent 43 years in a wheelchair because of a mistaken 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.

After that he 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,-" Manuel Melao, owner of the cafe in Alandroal, southeast Portugal, told the newspaper. Now aged 61, Borrego is able to live a normal life, requiring only two physiotherapy sessions a year.

He insists he harbours 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.