Tag: chronic-illness

• The Google Meet

  Pediatric autoimmune encephalitis was always interesting to me from the day I heard about it. When I read about it in the acclaimed Sunflower pediatrics book, I was confused. Adding to the fact that it was quite a rare disorder, I was bedazzled how the brain can be suddenly attacked by the immune system, leading to a whole load of neurological symptoms (such as memory loss, repeated seizures and not to mention inflammation!). When I learned there was a Google Meet organized discussing this topic and it’s causes, I evidently signed up.

  Unlike the previous time, I was aware of this event quite a bit in advance, so I joined right in the nick of time, and saw several famous doctors that I have examined before in numerous pamphlets and medical papers. After some brief introductions, the board announced that over 300 people all over the world were attending this meeting, and I was absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of people, likely very similar to me. After recovering from that fact, the meeting went on.

  Several doctors presented their case studies before we delved into the sub topics, but one case study really stood out to me over anything else. Before I present it, I have to state that pediatric autoimmune encephalitis is not a direct genetic disorder, meaning that a child can contract the disorder out of nowhere. While a family history of other autoimmune diseases can increase the likelihood, most patients have near no genetic history of these kind of diseases. As I was stating, the case study was of a young girl, aged around 9 years old, who suddenly contracted the disease, and with no family history surrounding her, the doctors weren’t able to diagnose where the disorder originated from. Luckily, a few days after she was in the hospital, they found out it was due to an exposure of the bacteria streptococcus, which can be found on skin and on animals.

  The part that really interested me in this case was it showed how deadly the disease actually is, as it starts of with brain inflammation symptoms, which can by itself kill you, but with so much more symptoms it is quite terrifying, predominantly such as impaired thinking, numbness, seizures and loss of consciousness (even leading to prolonged comas).

  

  Once we later moved on from the case studies, we delved right into treatment, ranging from antibody testing to therapeutic treatment, which really intrigued me due to the fact that it has proven to be very effective in these sort of cases, which is really heartwarming to me. Overall, it was just as fun as the previous meeting, and I’d love to delve in more.

  December 2, 2025

  chronic-illness, health, mental-health, nutrition, wellness

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• Neurology Conferences

  During the summer, I got much more into medicine. I completed numerous courses on various academy websites, and constantly emailed many doctors about all the questions I had.
  Eventually, around a term break after school had started, I had got invited to attend a conference at a hospital with Dr. Hadi and Dr. Pawan as panelists and speakers. I was so nervous and worried, and revised multiple notes and blog posts and literally everything that had to do with neurology. I constantly emailed Dr. Hadi, asking a lot about the conference, and about nearly every single question about medicine that popped up in my head. Unfortunately, I never attended the conference, as I wasn’t able to obtain passes. As sad as I was, I got a phenomenal opportunity the next day, at around 5:30 p.m! Apparently, Dr. Hadi was hosting an online meeting, with around 2 other speakers and 2 panelists, each legends in the field of neuroscience!

  At around 5:55, I was hurrying around my living room, scouring inch and inch for my notebooks, pens, headphones and electronics, and screaming the whole house down finding them, and finally, at around 5:58, I managed to join the call, out of breath, thankful for the fact that audio and video were disabled, but that didn’t hinder my enjoyment from the meeting. When it finally started at precisely 6, the chat comments were flooded with doctors and people like me (but older) registering and giving their details, and it honestly astonished me around how many people have the same interests and curiosity as me, and it just showed me as how minimal knowledge I have compared to people around the world, from the United Kingdom to Mexico!
  
  The call started with a brief introduction to a lot of the doctors and panelists, and it really showed me just the amount of work and dedication these people put into their craft and work, and just how much of a passion they have for this, and it’s such an inspiration.
  

  What really pleased me about this conference was that it wasn’t a robotic lecture about certain parts of neuroscience, but an interesting, pull-you-in conference, where the doctors displayed numerous case studies and examples, showcasing their own work and what they have done, and the diagnoses they have given based on the patient. It ranged from conditions of children who had infantile, epileptic spasms, (which consists of jerky movements and usual development regression, where the child is very behind his developmental milestones), and how they were able to diagnose his condition based on his numerous symptoms, to conditions where the child was a teenager and tragically died due to an unhealthy amount of ingested alcohol (at the age of 14).
  

  

  It started off with the case study of a child with mild weakness in his body, where he could walk but was unable to balance, with a decline in his movement skills. He was overall behind in his physical and mental skills, with inability to perform his daily tasks without getting slurred and tired. After numerous gait tests and neurological examinations, they diagnosed the child with MLD, and the child moved abroad for further examination. MLD is the condition which affects a bodies white matter, and is actually relatively uncommon, found in ~ 1 in 40,000 people. The treatment method they used to treat him for the time they had (and the treatment evidently used in the country the child had travelled to) was Gene Therapy with Atidarsagene Automecel, which uses other functional genes to create genetically modified cells, to summarize it.

  

  They showed other case studies and their treatment, and also accompanied with tips. The most important tip I personally took from the meeting was related to forgetfulness. Many doctors and neurologists tend to focus on what’s currently going on, and not other possibilities, no matter how unlikely. This can lead to other treatments not being used, which in the long term can be deadly to the patient. A core example is the one I mentioned previously, the teenager drinking and dying. This could’ve been prevented by checking ammonia levels, but nobody had thought to check that, leading to the sad death.

  Overall, the meeting introduced me to numerous more topics and showed me so much more examples of conditions and symptoms than I thought possible before, and the significant amount of treatment plans that exists. It was so fun, listening to so much doctors give their own opinions and critical overviews on all the topics, and the sheer amount of questions I (and numerous [I mean numerous!] amount of people) asked. It was such a fun meeting, and I would love to attend another one soon!

  October 18, 2025

  chronic-illness, health, life, mental-health, writing

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