Encephalitis - What is this?

As promised here is the info on encephalitis, this information is available on http://www.encephalitis.info/ .. This site has a lot of information but is based out of the UK which means that there is not much support in Canada. Even thought the occurence of encephalitis is getting more and more prevalent.

Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. There are many types of encephalitis, most of which are caused by viral infection. Encephalitis can be contracted from Influenza A, Influenza B, chickenpox, West Nile and many other viral infections. Encephalitis causes brain injury. Our daughter's inflammation was mainly in her brain stem and pons area. The brain stem controls all information sent from the brain to the rest of your body.

The symptoms for encephalitis are the following: confusion, drowsiness, headache, irritability, light sensitivity, loss of consciousness, memory loss, muscle weakness, poor judgment, seizures, stiff neck and back, sudden fever, sudden severe dementia, unstable walking and vomiting. If you compare this to any flu, a lot of the symptoms are similar which is why it makes this life-threatening illness so hard to diagnose. My daughter’s only early symptom was unstable walking, which at the time, we thought she was simply a bit dehydrated from the flu and lack of response which we attributed to also being tired and sick.

This illness is not new when I've research it which still happens now and again. You can see stories of these illness dating back to the early 1900's. There is no known cure for this illness and the doctor will never give you a prognosis. The best you will get out of them is that she is doing well.

What are the changes of reoccurence? this is not known either. I'm not sure why..

This leaves me with mix feeling about our medical system. If as a parent, you cannot turn to anyone get some answer it's makes coping even harder. Our family doctor is dismissive of our naturopath recommendations.. Which is better western medicine or eastern medicine? It's really hard to say both had great attributes but I can say that our naturopath is more forth coming with information then our family doctor is.

Having said this, you need to trust your instinct and keep questioning. Don't back down as a parent you need to be able to say that you've made the right decision because in the end, you have to live with the choice you've made for your family.

On this I say, take care for now.

MommaBear