Rare autoimmune disease mistaken for mental illness

[Ocean]

Thought this was interesting. Nice that one person sharing their story ended up helping save someone else.
http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/49820065#49820065

 

[Snow Leopard]

Wow, glad to hear such a great recovery story.

Very disappointing that the doctors failed to listen until this young woman was almost dead!

Luckily she was still able to recover in the end.

 

[Nielk]

Ocean,

Thanks for bringing us this video. What a scary, yet uplifting story. They don't really talk that much about the rare illness and nothing about the treatment.
Who knows how many obscure illnesses are out there that the medical field in large is unaware of and therefore withhold possible treatments to bring resolution.

 

[nanonug]

This is what they are talking about: Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

 

[maryb]

Ocean,

Thanks for bringing us this video. What a scary, yet uplifting story. They don't really talk that much about the rare illness and nothing about the treatment.
Who knows how many obscure illnesses are out there that the medical field in large is unaware of and therefore withhold possible treatments to bring resolution.

A great story of recovery. I agree it would have been intersting to hear more about the illness and treatment. How scary is it that this young person would have died without Suzannes help and no-one would have been any the wiser.
Ring any bells!!!!!

 

[Snow Leopard]

I heard that treatment is via corticosteroids, immunoglobulins, plasmapheresis and Rituximab.

 

[AFCFS]

Well, it is a great video and uplifting. I find the videos on the site a good reminder that what goes on in the noggin is very very complicated and lends no end to mystery. The After oral Surgery, woman speaks with accent and has Foreign Accent Syndrome (less than 100 cases ever reported) and After concussion, man becomes musical genius and Acquired Savant Syndrome (30 people in the world) are interesting.

The thing I don't get is how they can come up with a Dx for these cases and have the doctors sit there and explain them with an air of confidence, but are essentially dumfounded by something as prevalent as CFS. The site has no search results for CFS and only one for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - How to spot symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, which seems to me to be a rather odd title in that CFS is currently only defined as a collection of symptoms, so it is a like saying how to spot symptoms of a collection of symptoms. And it it is talked about in the context of a "Woman's Disease," with brief mention that men and women can get it at 4:00 minutes into the video.

- On the other hand, do not think I will try 5 hour energy drink for CFS - FDA: 5-Hour Energy Drink linked to deaths - 13 possibly attributable deaths since 2009 - that is almost twice as many as the 7 Hungarian soldiers who died in Afghanistan since 2002 (bless their souls).

 

[Wayne]

what goes on in the noggin is very very complicated and lends no end to mystery.

Agree on this. I read a book once which described nutritional therapies that allowed 90% of institutionalized schizophrenics to be released and once again live independently, as long as they followed a strict diet. I'm convinced a large percentage, if not most "mental illnesses" originate from nutritional and/or environmental factors.