![]() That confusion about the diagnosis and causes of FND has long been accompanied by a reluctance by physicians in various specialties to treat it. It was frequently a last resort, a diagnosis based on medically unexplained symptoms, arrived at only after ruling out everything else. Often, in its many guises, it mimicked better known conditions. It wasn’t a “rule in” diagnosis, something that test results might reliably point to. Until very recently, FND remained largely mysterious. Nor are these patients necessarily physically ill, though functional neurological symptoms may be observed in patients with strokes, epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease. But patients with FND aren’t, by conventional standards, necessarily mentally ill, although many also suffer from anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Many know it as conversion disorder, a term still in use, which frames the condition as a psychological illness-stress or neurosis expressed, or converted, into physical symptoms. ![]() They were the hallmark of a condition now known as functional neurological disorder, or FND.įND, under various names, has perplexed physicians since ancient times. ![]() Impulses in his brain were somehow being diverted or hijacked by certain neural pathways, causing seizures-so-called functional (psychogenic, non-epileptic) seizures-and other symptoms. They described his condition as “mental,” his racing heart as “psychosomatic.” After McLaughlin was discharged, his doctor referred him to the Massachusetts General Hospital Emergency Department, where his inpatient team of physicians cataloged the symptoms: the tensing up, an increase in heart rate, confusion, sudden episodes of paralysis and his sense of a “fat tongue.” Everything in his nervous system appeared to be structurally sound, yet it was nevertheless malfunctioning. Yet the doctors found no clear reason for what he was experiencing. His primary care physician sent him to the local hospital, and he was admitted with a racing heart and monitored for cardiac arrhythmia. He had injured his ankle at a worksite, he suffered periodic migraines and some people described him as anxious-“I hate that word,” McLaughlin says-but generally he was fine. He had never before had any physical or mental health problems that seemed serious. When parents of other kids approached, McLaughlin could hear them but was unable to respond.Īt the time, McLaughlin’s job was doing road maintenance in southern New Hampshire. At the skating rink, the attacks of paralysis continued and became more intense. Suddenly, he felt he’d been “turned off,” McLaughlin says, and when his wife asked him what was wrong, he found he couldn’t speak. One Sunday morning in January 2018, Eric McLaughlin was putting on his shoes while helping his son get ready for hockey practice.
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