You know that moment when you walk into a room and completely forget why you went there? Or when someone you've known for years walks up to you at the grocery store and their name just... vanishes from your brain? Last week, I spent ten minutes searching for my reading glasses while they were sitting on top of my head. My first thought wasn't "oh, silly me." It was "Is this how it starts?"
Remember when you first noticed your parents' hands trembling slightly as they poured coffee or signed a check? I started paying attention after my mother mentioned it during one of our Sunday calls, brushing it off as "just getting older." But that conversation sent me down a research rabbit hole that revealed something fascinating: those tiny tremors that appear after 60 aren't always what they seem, and knowing the difference between normal aging and something more serious could change everything.
She was, she says, a block of stone. They were in the neurological ward of a huge hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Travelling on the Metro, the hospital name scribbled on a scrap of paper, it had taken Henderson an hour to find. Roderick looked comfortable when she arrived; he was a good colour, but there was a round red mark in the centre of his forehead and a small tube inside his mouth, attached to something she later learned was breathing for him.
If you're a modern neurologist, you'll recognize this as a type of aphasia, a common symptom of stroke. You'll also know that aphasia is a language problem, not an intelligence problem; the patient may be able to think quite clearly but just can't translate those thoughts into coherent words and sentences. But it took many decades and a great deal of scientific effort to arrive at this modern understanding.
Mental health nowadays is seemingly almost glorified. A ton of people are blaming things on, 'Oh, it's just my OCD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.' (undiagnosed as well) - when these sudden changes can be huge telltale signs of actual diseases. I saw someone come into our neuro department after experiencing some fasciculations that we assumed were benign. But she explained how they acted with her 'anxiety and OCD,' which she had undiagnosed. She had late-stage MS.
Henry's medical mystery was finally solved by Dr. Christian Amlang, a neurologist and movement disorder specialist, who diagnosed her with functional neurological disorder after she saw seven other doctors.
The brain and nervous system may be more like a complex hologram than a simple electrical schematic. Lack of enough serotonin is thought to play a role in depression, anxiety, mania and other health conditions.
There is, however, no pharmacological treatment currently approved to treat hydrocephalus. Additionally, nearly 20 percent of patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus also have type 2 diabetes and take sodium/glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors to manage their blood sugar.
Kramer felt some arm tingling over the next couple of days and saw her doctor, who found nothing alarming on a CT scan. But then she started jumbling her words and finally had a relative drive her to an emergency room.
