The Girl With FND

Prologue

      Hi. I'm Carolyn, a 14 year old girl living in Idaho. I have a fairly strange disorder, that most people don't know about. It's called Functional Neurological Disorder, also known as FND, and it causes a lot of issues.

      FND has ruined my life. Basically, when I was 13, I started to have some weird things happen to me. I couldn't move. It was exactly like I was paralyzed. But after a bit, it went away. I thought it was normal at the time, so I didn't say anything to my parents.

      After a bit of that, it got really bad. It started out in my legs, but it started to spread. I still hadn't told my parents about it, and I wasn't going to anytime soon.

      I never actually told them. One time, while I was getting ready for bed, my legs went dead again. I had the door closed, so I just kinda sat there for a bit. After about 30 mins of being stranded on the floor, my dad came to the door and asked if I was okay. I said I was okay, but he noticed that my voice was coming from the floor, not near the sink where I would be if I was actually getting ready for bed.

      I decided that there wasn't really any harm in telling them, as it was just a normal thing, but I soon found out that being randomly paralyzed, isn't actually normal.

      Not only could I just not move my legs, I couldn't feel them either. While I told my mom about everything, and she explained that it wasn't normal, my dad went behind me and started doing things to my legs. He poked them, and tickled my feet, and I had no clue.

      After that, my mom said we needed to go to the hospital. They were hesitant to give me an emergency MRI, but did anyways. The results came back, and there was nothing there. The MRI showed a perfectly normal back, which marked paralysis off the list.

      That was definitely the most irritating ER visit I've ever had, and I've had a TON. They completely blew us over. It makes sense, as I'd walked into the ER with no trouble, but it was very irritating.

      We went back home, and everything seemed okay for a bit, but then things got worse. We ended up going to a children's hospital and demanded a neurologist. Luckily there was one on call, so we got one nearly right away.

      We told them about how I literally could not move, and that my mom's Physiologist had stabbed my foot with a piece of metal that would make a normal person scream and I hadn't felt a thing. They admitted me and game me 3 more MRI's. A brain, a better lower back one, and one on my legs. They all showed nothing.

      After two spinal taps, and a lot of examination, my neurologist came to the conclusion that I had FND, a stress caused disorder. At first we thought that was completely inaccurate and they had given me the wrong diagnosis, but after some studying up on it, it made perfect sense.

      So yeah. That's how this all started.