My view on FND and PNES.

I am writing this to try and advocate for people who truly have FND and PNES , I have seen lots of post of bashing people with these conditions and it’s sickening (I’m referring to those who truly suffer from these conditions) and are not malingering this is going to be a long post.

I suffered a traumatic cervical cord injury / Brain injury a couple years ago, I was temporarily paralyzed . I started to learn how to walk .

I was dealing with a lot of anxiety with all of what was going on. What started happening after wards was I would randomly get paralyzed again if I had a slight fall . Even though my scans and MRIS were negative this paralysis fluctuated. This happened again and I was diagnosed with FND. I wasn’t faking being paralyzed but the trauma I experienced and the anxiety I was dealing with was causing my body to go crazy, and present like I had a spinal cord injury.

Fast forward a few months I suffered a true seizure in my sleep to keep it short I also developed PNES after this .

I started to experience severe SVT episode with high lactate and profound low potassium and other metabolic derangements. According to nephrology happened on 9 different occasions.

1 year after my spinal injury I suffered a acute ischemic stroke and secondary MI due to demand ischemia . I was given TNK I had a NIHSS score of 17 .

I started to later develop random left sided paralysis but without imaging to back it up and it was fluctuating . But how would I know that at home dealing with these other conditions. I had lots of PNES episodes as it was hard for me to fathom experiencing all these medical problems at such a young age. Yes a good component of FND is the psych aspect but the underlying trauma for me is what triggered it. Not everyone with FND is faking it everyone deserves to be treated with respect and humility it wasn’t until I suffered the MI where I was taken serious had a heart surgery put on the right meds, put on ASM, beta blockers, timed toileting , psych. Where I actually started to improve.

My point is this the system here in America is so fucked up let’s not contribute to making it even worse just because we don’t understand a condition fully.