Brain Damage, OCD, Schizophrenia, Tourettes, Or Seizures???
Hi. When my son was 3.5, his fathers new girlfriend hit my son at the back of the head for misbehaving. At 5 yrs old, he had what appeared to be a right sided seizure. An EEG showed at 7 yrs as abnormal with rolandic spikes and predisposition to seizures. Directly after the seizure, my son changed and developed what appeared to be OCD. He would tap things and couldn’t get up from his seat / would be stuck so he couldn’t leave the house. Started hoarding and wearing many hats and necklaces and acting very strange. He was having strange thoughts and would accuse people of doing things they didn’t. He had a lot of abnormal eye movements, headaches, regression in learning and would walk on his tip toes and was now non functional. He bottomed out and was at the worst of OCD and at 10 yrs old, a Psychiatrist gave him Prozac and after 2 pills he went ballistic / hyped up and ended up in psychiatric ward for a few days and was given Resperidone. The Resperidone seemed to calm him and the OCD. He immediately went in for a 30 day stay to a children’s psychiatrist assessment centre and they concluded he had Tourette’s / OCD / Anxiety disorder, language disorder. He stayed on Respiridone for 2 years and gained 100 lbs so he switched to Abilify at 13 yrs. While he was on Abilify, he went through a period where he was always angry / aggressive and hyped up. (Has been tested many times for drugs and always negative). He would pace and rant and rave about topics, one topic after another for hours on end. He had severe anxiety and couldn’t make friends so he dropped out of school. He seemed to have some paranoia. His eyes would widen and he would look like he zoned out for a second at a time. The school suggested that he had Autism and My heart was telling me maybe it’s seizures or brain damage. He went through Autism testing and they concluded he didn’t have Autism. He had an episode where he said he wasn’t feeling well and became very agitated and left the house. The Police found him standing outside the police station in a stupor. He appeared to be in shock and couldn’t remember events and what I looked like. He was trying his hardest to remember our camping trip that we had the day before but couldn’t and started to sob uncontrollably like he has never done before. The police initially thought he was on drugs but after talking to him for a long time they felt that there may be something wrong with his brain and suggested I go to emergency. The hospital ran a drug test (negative) and suggested it could be anxiety or seizure but refused to give a CAT scan. I asked my doctor for a brain EEG at 14 yrs and it showed focal cerebral dysfunction in the bilateral anterior quadrants. MRI scan was normal. The Neurologist said she didn’t know what it was and because all of his symptoms were different, they couldn’t be seizures. No follow up was done. I had him in to see a psychosis team and because they couldn’t see his rantings and ravings, they concluded that he didn’t have schizophrenia or psychosis and felt he had OCD and anxiety - a high form and was prescribed a low dose of Quietapine. He refused to take it for 6 months and his condition worsened and police were called many times for his mental health and aggression. He was taken to the hospital and then was willing to take the Quetapine which seemed to calm him. He then developed really bad motor tics, breathing and facial tics so his family doctor prescribed Clonodine and it slowed the tics down initially but now at 15 he has numerous facial, neck tics that he can’t control. Since then my son started to withdraw from all people that he knows. Does not go to school. Does not shower or brush his teeth and wears the same clothes for months on end. He appears depressed but not in a suicidal way. He stays in his room 24/7 and sleeps all day / stays up all night and alternates between staying up over 24 hours and then takes his medication (quetapine, melatonin, clonodine) and then sleeping for 12 hours straight. His OCD is as bad as it was when he was 10). His cognitive ability has declined to the point where he can’t do anything for himself. He thoughts take a long time to catch up so he is unable to have a conversation with anyone because by the time the other person goes on to the next word, he is still trying to process the word that the person said 10 minutes ago so it is very frustrating and he just shuts down. He can’t touch things as he thinks he is spreading germs. He hardly ever leaves the house, has no friends or activities and gets extremely agitated at any question or the slightest bit of stress. He asks hundreds of times a day, “did you spit on me?, “did I spit on you”? He will question every move I make and think that he is hurting the things that he lightly touches. He asks me 100 times a day “did you say something”? I ask him if he is hearing things and he just looks away. He is unable to hold a conversation as his obsessions and thoughts get in the way. He started loosing track of time in the night. He would spend up to 6 hours in the bathroom with the water on and spitting and splashing the water in the sink. A month ago he told he that he would sit up every night and laugh uncontrollably and have conversations (dialogue) with himself in his head. I had to eventually take time of work as he was / is deteriorating. He goes into the bathroom up to 3 times a night for hours on end and stands there and talks and laughs with himself. When I question him he just laughs and says “ I don’t know”. He was in his bathroom last night for 2 hours, whispering and laughing and having a conversation and when he came out he was very happy and calmer ( which is very weird because that is what he is always like after his talking sessions). He was able to partially have a conversation with me and opened up and told me that he has visions of himself doing everyday things in the future and there are other people in his visions and they respond back to him and have a dialogue with him during these talking sessions. He says he has them all the time and that he can clearly see the visions as if he were truly there. He says that he doesn’t see people or have people talk to him as in hallucinations or auditory hallucinations but he does say that these visions and conversations that he has are so vivid that he feels like he is there. He says he doesn’t control what the people say and insists that they never say anything bad to him. He explains it as having a dialogue or really vivid daydream in your head and imagining these conversations but he has no control and can’t stop them and they feel so real as if he is truly there. He says when he thinks about it, it seems a bit scary but he can’t control it. It’s almost like he is having another life going on at the same time as this one, that is what it seems like. My impression is that he is having normal daydreams that we all have but they are uncontrollable and they are so vivid that he feels like he is actually there. He is desperately fearful of doctors, police or psychiatrists so he won’t go and see them. Recently he did see a psychiatrist and he prescribed Zoloft but my son refuses to take it as it is in the Prozac family and he had a bad experience with that. I am all consumed with healing my son and I am trying to look at every angle to find out what is wrong and how can I fix it. He used to laugh, want friends, loved doing activities and now he is isolated and is getting weirder tendencies by the day. Both schizophrenia AND Brain Damage will cause problems with detaching from reality, attention, concentration, reasoning and cognitive skills and alter the way a person makes sense of or interacts with the world around them. They both have a way of changing the thought process or behaviours of the person.
If there is anyone that has any knowledge or the ability to look deeper to find out what is really going on and how to fix it, please let me know. As of today, he is non functional and getting worse. I would appreciate any and all help that I can get.
Reply With Quote
TO CHILD NEUROLOGY ON BRAINTALK!
