Autism or Encephalitis? My Son’s Misdiagnosis and Our Family’s Season in Hell | Hacker News Reader

Autism or Encephalitis? My Son’s Misdiagnosis and Our Family’s Season in Hell

quillette.com

14 points74025 comments

"For that matter, what percentage of patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders are really suffering from autoimmune disorders? Research on the link between psychosis and autoimmune dysregulation is still in its infancy, but growing, as is research linking autoimmune issues to developmental disorders."

I have pretty bad OCD, and even as a child I noticed my symptoms got worse whenever I got sick. In fact, my symptoms would get worse several days before I'd official come down with something. They talk about OCD in children caused by Strep these days ("PANDAS") but I don't think childhood is some special state. Illnesses in adulthood have also exacerbated symptoms for me.

i read some research recently that showed that the immune system is reaponsible for the pruning of axonal connections between neurons in the brain. As such Schizophrenia is an genetic abnormality that increases the amount of pruning of axonal connections which diminishes the inhibitory function that some neurons have on others.

Edit: spelling

> EEG #1 showed that Leo was having seizures. The doctors said it may have been going on for months.

So sad, that's too long. I can't believe that none of the physicians they saw prior to going to the ER recognized this.

Doctors are just humans. As my life has progressed I have come to realize more and more how doctors are not somehow a special breed of people.

Just like there are good software developers and bad software developers there are good doctors and bad doctors. Some software developers can debug an issue systematically and figure out the root cause and some run around in circles, making wild guesses, adding duct tape to "fix" things (ultimately breaking things even more) or just plain not figuring it out. Honestly giving up and saying "I can't figure it out" is better. Then you can get the cavalry in.

Doctors are just like that. But unlike software developers they're these half gods in white and we tend to believe without question even when they have no idea whatsoever or make a wild guess or a wrong assumption.

Personal experience what my GPs have been good with:

Were usually able to figure out that I had some sort of viral sinus-y infection. Were usually able to figure out that I might have a bacterial sinus-y infection and prescribed antibiotics.

That's it! Since it's personal medical stuff I won't go into details but there are multiple other things that they have not been able to figure out even after more than 20 years (including sending me to specialists that were no better at figuring anything out). I figured some of them out or have given up trying to self-diagnose or trying out doctors as they're inconvenient things but I can live with them.

This is so scary. Good for the author for sharing her experience

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