The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder | Hacker News Reader

The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder

wired.com

27 pointssuketk15 comments

A degenerative brain disease, cause unknown, no treatment, dementia in early age 30s.

Following a surgical procedure for heart problem, which was relatively easy for current medicine, it's as if his brain didn't come back, his personality changed, he was losing the ability to be himself.

Horrible, but real.

Also today I sat with a close family member as they received a diagnosis for a serious psychiatric illness. Treatable, but the drugs currently available have rough side effects. It's not going to get easier.

The article characterizes Halloway's disease as a "rare" disorder, only one in 5,000 people.

But it really seems as if the bigger picture, of everyone currently sidelined with "Long COVID" or chronic mental health conditions or both... Well, it's less rare than I might like it to be.

> Following a surgical procedure for heart problem, which was relatively easy for current medicine, it's as if his brain didn't come back, his personality changed, he was losing the ability to be himself.

From the article it seems the problem manifested years before the surgery. The surgery only accelerated the decline.

(2020)

About Lee Holloway of Cloudflare.

Shows you that whatever new tech there is to be excited about the most important thing in life isn't work, but your health and your family.

once your health starts failing, it becomes almost impossible to get it back to normal. People should realize that physical and mental health is worth more than any amount of money.

This article was totally sad, seeing this brilliant (young) guy becoming a shell of himself was really shocking.

My condolences to all whose lives were touched by Lee.

Good looking s-o-b.

A bit of a shot in the dark but I wonder if Lee Holloway had (has?) a latent vitamin B12 deficiency? Serum tests for B12 deficiency are notoriously unreliable so it may not have been detected unless other tests were performed.

Vitamin B12 deficiency can disrupt sleep patterns, can cause symptoms consistent with FTD (including brain atrophy), and the use of nitrous oxide in general anesthesia on someone suffering from B12 deficiency can result in devastating neurological effects.

Like I said, it's definitely a shot in the dark but it's definitely something to think about.

Unlikely. This kind of brain injury and dementia isn’t uncommon in heart surgery patients. It’s a known risk. We aren’t 100% certain of mechanisms of action.

But his cardiac surgery was in 2015.

Meanwhile, according to the article, symptoms began to appear far earlier. There is mention of migraines in 2009 and 2011 appears to be the start of some sort of sleep disorder (him sleeping for three days is used as an example) as well as the beginning of marked personality changes.

All this was already underway before the 2015 surgery - the surgery seemed to accelerate the deterioration but does not appear to be the trigger.

EDIT: Came across this paper while browsing PubMed:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6837928/

Here's an interesting quote:

"Additionally, infants and children with congenital heart defects often show disorders in folate metabolism (low folate, higher homocysteine, or low vitamin B12)."

Considering the surgery was to repair a leaky aortic valve which he's had since birth, it just seems like another data point.

Just my two cents.

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