Health Journal Online

Tag: Rare

  • Rare Water Allergy Causes Excruciating Pain For Woman—From Drinking To Showering, She Shares Her Daily Struggle

    Rare Water Allergy Causes Excruciating Pain For Woman—From Drinking To Showering, She Shares Her Daily Struggle

    You may never realize how often water touches our lives until you have a disorder like the 25-year-old young mother from the U.K. who describes simple daily activities such as washing hands, drinking water, or taking a bath as “excruciatingly painful”.

    An extremely rare condition called aquagenic urticaria makes the life of Kendall Bryce, from Durham, UK, a real struggle. As a young mother of one, pregnant with her second child, she finds it difficult to take care of herself and or her child while battling the condition.

    “I’ve never been able to give my one-year-old son a bath. My mom has to do it for me. And I even feel my throat burning when I drink water,” she said.

    “It really is a daily struggle. I can only have a bath or take a shower twice a week because of how excruciating the pain is, so I constantly worry I stink,” said Bryce.

    Bryce’s condition began when she was just 15 when she started noticing hives after she took a bath. But little did she realize that was the beginning of her battle with water allergy until she was diagnosed with the condition four years back.

    “The GP didn’t have a clue what to do. It’s just such a rare condition, so not many people have it and not many people know about it,” Bryce recalled, still living with the constant pain. The pain is so severe that her body sometimes goes into shock.

    “My life is dictated by the weather as I have to avoid rain — and even hot humid days. I check the forecast every day and stay home if it’s raining or going to rain, but if I get caught out by surprise, my body reacts and it’s really painful,” she added.

    There is currently no cure for water allergy, but treatment options are available to manage the symptoms. Treatments include the use of oral antihistamines, topical medications like creams or emulsions, phototherapy using artificial UV light, and sometimes other medications like asthma drugs, anabolic steroids, or SSRIs.

    While pregnant, Bryce’s treatment options are however limited. “They’ve tried lots of different medications but I kept reacting. I still haven’t found something that helps,” Bryce said. However, she hopes that by sharing her story, she might connect with someone who knows how to treat her condition.

    Source link

  • Rare “Gorilla Cherry” Secret Helps Support A Healthy Prostate

    Rare “Gorilla Cherry” Secret Helps Support A Healthy Prostate

    Product Name: Rare “Gorilla Cherry” Secret Helps Support A Healthy Prostate

    Click here to get Rare “Gorilla Cherry” Secret Helps Support A Healthy Prostate at discounted price while it’s still available…

    All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors.

    Rare “Gorilla Cherry” Secret Helps Support A Healthy Prostate is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.

    (more…)

  • Teen Dies From Rare Brain Tumor After Unusual Symptoms; Heartbroken Mom Urges Others To Recognize Signs

    Teen Dies From Rare Brain Tumor After Unusual Symptoms; Heartbroken Mom Urges Others To Recognize Signs

    When 12-year-old Jody tripped and fell multiple times, had trouble walking straight, and struggled to fasten her shirt buttons, her mother never suspected it could be a sign of something serious—until doctors delivered the devastating news of a rare brain tumor.

    After years of battling the disease, Jody passed away in 2022, at the age of 16, and her heartbroken mother, Sarah Levett, from Surrey in South East England, now raises awareness about the condition, hoping that parents could spot the signs as soon as possible.

    Levett, who is organizing a fundraiser next month for the Brain Tumor Charity in her daughter’s memory, says she does it so no other parent or child has to endure the unimaginable heartbreak they experienced.

    When Jody first experienced symptoms like migraines, difficulty with balance, and frustration that led to screaming fits, Levett thought it might be related to her autism. But during a check-up, doctors discovered that Jody was in the advanced stages of a rare brain tumor.

    “It was absolutely terrifying. As the doctor spoke about how big the tumor was, I couldn’t take it all in,” Levett recollected the moments following the diagnosis.

    “I just wanted it gone. But I tried as hard as I could to hide how scared I was, as Jody was so young. I didn’t want her to worry – in fact, she was more bothered about the fact she was unable to go to school. She started bumping into things, like a wheelie bin on the pavement, only a few months before the diagnosis,” she said.

    Jody underwent treatment for around 10 months, including a surgery that removed 80% of the tumor, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy until she was stable. However, a year later, a follow-up scan revealed that the tumor had returned.

    As Jody’s condition rapidly declined, she underwent four more surgeries and doctors discovered a brain bleed before she tragically died.

    “The main aim [of the fundraiser] is to continue the awareness of brain tumors and changes needed, and the lack of mental health support for bereaved parents. I know there’s a lot of strain on healthcare at the moment, but I really don’t want any other parents or children to have to go through the unimaginable heartbreak like we have done,” Levett said.

    Brain tumors may present with symptoms such as seizures, balance issues, behavioral changes, slurred speech, fatigue, weakness, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.

    Source link

  • Fitness Trainer Gets Diagnosed With Rare Blood Cancer At 25 After Brushing Off Strange Symptoms

    Fitness Trainer Gets Diagnosed With Rare Blood Cancer At 25 After Brushing Off Strange Symptoms

    For a 23-year-old fitness trainer, Dilan Patel in the U.K., life was going normal until he began experiencing a strange, recurring symptom that kept him up two to three times a night. For nearly two years, Patel ignored night sweats and several other warning signs. However, when they became impossible to overlook, he was faced with a life-altering diagnosis: Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer.

    Hodgkin Lymphoma is a cancer that affects the lymphatic system. Although a serious form of cancer, the tumors in the lymph nodes can be cured if diagnosed and treated early. However, most often signs such as night sweats can easily be mistaken for less serious issues.

    “You won’t believe it… I was 25 years old, living my life like any other young adult – working hard, working out, hanging with friends, and trying to figure out my future. Life felt normal. I had no reason to think anything was wrong. But then something strange started happening,” Patel said in a TikTok video.

    “I’d wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. I mean SOAKED. My clothes, my bed – everything would be wet. It happened 2-3 times every single night. At first, I just thought, ‘Maybe I’m getting too hot under the covers?’ So I brushed it off,” he added.

    Apart from night sweats, Patel experienced persistent itchy skin, which he brushed off as nothing more than dryness, and fatigue and lumps on his neck that he assumed were from intense gym workouts.

    “Everything had an explanation – or so I thought,” Patel said. However, by the time Patel was diagnosed with stage 4B Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, he already had five tumors and the cancer had even spread to his lung.

    “I couldn’t believe it. I’d spent so long brushing off my symptoms, convincing myself they weren’t a big deal. But my body had been screaming at me for almost 2 years,” Patel said.

    The symptoms of Hodgkin lymphoma include painless, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, underarm, or groin, unexplained fever, drenching night sweats, weight loss over six months without a clear reason, persistent fatigue, and itchy skin, particularly after bathing or drinking alcohol.

    “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s to pay attention to your body. Those little signs and symptoms? They’re there for a reason. Don’t wait until it’s too late,” Patel added.



    Source link

  • Woman’s Migraines, Motion Sickness Thought To Be From Phone Use Revealed Rare Brain Disorder

    Woman’s Migraines, Motion Sickness Thought To Be From Phone Use Revealed Rare Brain Disorder

    For years, 44-year-old Charlie Rolstone from the U.K. brushed off her migraines, motion sickness, and occasional blackouts as the side effects of spending too much time on her phone. But a medical emergency three years ago revealed a chilling truth that her symptoms stemmed from a rare brain disorder from her skull pushing against the brain.

    An MRI taken during the emergency visit revealed that Rolstone had epilepsy and a Chiari malformation, a condition caused by an abnormal skull structure that forces the brain to extend downward into the spinal canal.

    “I’ve had it my whole life, but my symptoms have only been getting worse as I’ve got older,” said Rolstone, SWNS reported.

    “I’ve suffered with migraines since I was a teen. Whenever I cough, I also get a very piercing pain in my head, covering the back of my skull. It only lasts for, maybe, 30 seconds — but it’s enough to make me grab my head. I can’t even shout or raise my voice without getting a headache. These were symptoms I knew to be there, but I thought they were normal,” she added.

    Rolstone thought she would grow out of the symptoms until she received the diagnosis while she was taken to the hospital after collapsing from a seizure. The doctors also found out that she had brain lesions and an aneurysm.

    “I don’t know the full extent of the damage the condition has done, but I’m glad we’ve caught it now. That seizure saved my life — it revealed my Chiari malformation,” she said.

    Rolstone now manages her migraines with painkillers and limits her phone use to reduce motion sickness. With medications for epilepsy, she has been seizure-free for 21 months.

    Chiari malformation can be present with or without symptoms, and the signs depend on the type of condition. In Chiari malformation type 1, symptoms such as headaches, particularly while coughing or sneezing, neck pain, poor hand coordination, numbness in the hands and feet, and difficulty swallowing, typically begin in late childhood or adulthood, though the condition is often congenital.

    In rare cases, individuals with Chiari malformation type 1 may experience additional symptoms, including ringing or buzzing in the ears (tinnitus), muscle weakness, a slow heart rhythm, curvature of the spine (scoliosis) linked to spinal cord impairment, and breathing difficulties.

    Type 2 Chiari malformation is typically associated with a myelomeningocele, a form of spina bifida where the spinal canal and backbone fail to close properly before birth. The symptoms include difficulty swallowing, changes in breathing pattern, sudden downward eye movements and weakness in arms.

    Source link

  • Pregnant Woman And Baby Saved After Doctors Identify Her Bad Cough, Breathlessness Was Rare Tumor In Chest

    Pregnant Woman And Baby Saved After Doctors Identify Her Bad Cough, Breathlessness Was Rare Tumor In Chest

    MaKenna Lauterbach from Illinois was 36 weeks pregnant when she received the shocking diagnosis of a large tumor in her chest, revealing the real cause of the persistent cough and breathlessness during her pregnancy. The 26-year-old, who was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma, is now stable and recovering, along with her healthy baby, thanks to the timely intervention and coordinated efforts of a dedicated team of doctors.

    When Lauterbach experienced a bad cough while she was expecting, she knew something was wrong. Simple tasks, like walking to the barn to feed her horses, left her unusually winded, as if she had just run two miles. However, doctors were initially hesitant to perform chest scans due to concerns about radiation exposure.

    When Lauterbach was almost due, the cough worsened to the extent that she started throwing up and had to be hospitalized for shortness of breath. The scans then revealed a grapefruit-sized tumor in her chest, blocking the artery to her right lung.

    By the time Lauterbach received the diagnosis, she was in respiratory distress, the tumor obstructing her airway, putting both her life and her baby’s at risk.

    After being airlifted to the intensive care unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, her condition worsened, she went into labor, her blood pressure spiked, and the baby began showing signs of distress during contractions.

    “Lauterbach was in real trouble, and we had to act quickly – this wasn’t something that could wait for Monday morning. When you’re pregnant with a baby that’s nearly full-term, your lungs already aren’t functioning at full capacity, and when you add a huge tumor on top of it, you run the risk of having respiratory collapse and cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Lynn Yee, maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine in a news release.

    Doctors quickly prepared Lauterbach for extracorporeal life support (ECMO) and performed an emergency C-section, successfully delivering a healthy baby boy.

    “Because of the tumor, the delivery happened so quickly. I was grieving the birth plan I had spent months preparing for, while also dealing with the news of my unexpected diagnosis,” Lauterbach said.

    While her newborn remained in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, doctors performed an advanced bronchoscopy on Lauterbach. The procedure revealed that her tumor was stage 3 melanoma, prompting the medical team to immediately begin developing a treatment plan.

    “Lauterbach’s diagnosis was difficult to make because we weren’t sure if the melanoma started in the chest or somewhere else, and there isn’t much literature or published cases on how to best treat tumors like these, so we had to rely on the expertise that we’ve developed here at Northwestern Medicine,” said Dr. Kalvin Lung, a thoracic surgeon with the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute.

    The medical team decided on surgery to remove the tumor. Before the procedure, Lauterbach was given three cycles of immunotherapy which helped shrink the tumor from 13 centimeters to nine centimeters.

    “We think at some point, Lauterbach had a melanoma on her skin and her own immune system took care of it, but not before a cell or two may have escaped and eventually started growing inside her body,” explained Dr. Sunandana Chandra, medical oncologist with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

    During the surgery, doctors had to remove her right lung parts of the main pulmonary artery, and lymph nodes. “The tumor was sitting on top of Lauterbach’s heart and extended into the right lung, impacting all three lobes and the entire main trunk of the pulmonary artery, which is why we had to remove the right lung,” said Dr. Lung who conducted the surgery along with Dr. Chris Mehta, a cardiac surgeon with the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.

    “It’s extremely rare to see this type of tumor invading into the major blood vessels of the heart. We may see something like this once every few years,” Dr. Mehta added.

    Lauterbach’s latest scans show no evidence of metastatic melanoma, and while her cancer remains stable with no new tumors, she will continue immunotherapy treatments for the next year.

    Source link

  • Texas Woman Who Briefly Died After Rare Delivery Room Complication Has No Memory of Giving Birth to Triplets

    Texas Woman Who Briefly Died After Rare Delivery Room Complication Has No Memory of Giving Birth to Triplets

    A Texas woman retained no memory of giving birth to triplets, including the 48 to 72 hours leading up to the delivery, after being clinically dead for about 45 minutes post-birth.

    Tomball resident Marisa Christie gave birth to triplets in late August, during which she faced multiple pregnancy-related complications causing her to flatline multiple times in just 45 minutes.

    “It was the toughest moment of my life going from the most beautiful experience in seeing our baby girls for the first time to ‘oh my gosh my wife is—they’re doing CPR on her’. I just remember going to the restroom and collapsing on the ground expressing myself to God,” said her husband, Dylan Christie, who had been in the delivery room at the time of the births.

    Marisa, who had already had one son before giving birth to triplets, miraculously survived the ordeal. According to her Maternal Fetal Medicine Physician, Dr. Amber Samuel, Marisa survived a rare post-birth complication called amniotic fluid embolism, a condition with a mortality rate of 80%.

    “Some exposure that causes the mom’s body to react like a really bad allergic reaction. I think they call it like 7.7 cases on 100,000,” Dr. Samuel said.

    Dylan made the call for Marisa to be administered a hysterectomy, which ultimately saved her life. However, when she recovered and woke up, she had no recollection of the delivery or the days leading up to it.

    “My family took lots of photos and videos of me when I was in the hospital, which helped a lot to kind of have reality hit,” Marisa said.

    The family has set up a GoFundMe in order to cover Marisa’s medical costs.

    Originally published by Latin Times.

    Source link

  • Know About Rare Illness, Life-Threatening Complications

    Know About Rare Illness, Life-Threatening Complications

    Brazil has reported the first-ever deaths from Oropouche Virus, a relatively unknown illness with no specific vaccines or medications for prevention and treatment.

    Two women in Bahia, a northeastern Brazilian state, have died of forest Oropuche virus, which has already infected 7,236 people this year in Brazil, the country’s health ministry reported last week. The Oropouche virus primarily spreads to people through the bite of infected midges, though some mosquitoes can also transmit the virus.

    According to reports, both the victims were under 30 years old, with no history of comorbidities, but had developed symptoms similar to dengue, another mosquito-borne illness.

    The Oropouche virus was first identified in a Caribbean forest worker in 1955. Since then, many countries in the Amazon region, including Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Panama, and Peru, have reported cases of infection. Currently, there is no evidence of disease transmission in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

    Know Signs and Complications:

    The symptoms typically start abruptly with severe fever, headache, fatigue, and muscular and joint pain within a week after being bitten by the infected midges or mosquito. These symptoms can last a week and may return after a few days or weeks.

    The patients with mild illness recover within days or weeks. However, more serious cases (up to 4% of cases) develop neurologic symptoms. Patients may develop neuroinvasive diseases such as meningitis (inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord), encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), or experience bleeding. Since the symptoms of the Oropouche disease are similar to those of dengue, chikungunya, Zika, or malaria, it can be often misdiagnosed.

    Treatment:

    For those with mild Oropouche infection, supportive care that typically includes rest, plenty of fluids, and the use of analgesics and antipyretics is recommended. In case of severe symptoms, patients require hospitalization for close observation and more intensive supportive treatment.

    Prevention tips:

    Since there are no effective vaccinations and drugs for Oropouche, the best way to protect from the infection is to prevent bites from midges and mosquitoes. Like all vector-borne viral infections, effective strategies for vector control can also reduce disease transmission.

    Source link