Fortune Favors the Bold: (Epilogue to the Walter Reed Scandal Story)

Chapter 1, part 2: Doppelganger

The mysterious symptoms arrived shortly after Talon's started his freshman year of high school. Little did I know they would progress over the upcoming year. No one warned me or prepared me for the eventuality of what was about to come. Life doesn't give you a handbook, and I desperately needed one to make sense of it all.

At first he started complaining of dizzy spells. I wondered if he was having low blood pressure issues, so I gave him my blood pressure monitor to test his blood pressure throughout the normal activities of his day. The results were on the low side of normal, but not enough to trigger concern from his primary care doctor. I witnessed these spells with my own eyes and they would happen multiple times a day. He would teeter unexpectedly and stumble intermittently. Other times he spaced out like he was in a trance. I was used to his father losing his balance through the day, or staring off into the distance. all as a result of his brain injury. Even though I was familiar with handling similar symptoms for the last 9 years of my life, I had to come to terms with the fact I now I had two people in my home with significant fall risks. Since Talon's vision was altered during these events I asked his doctor if he could be tested for diabetes. Perhaps he was dealing with low blood sugars? Those results came back negative, too.

Then he started passing out in the oddest places. One morning he was in the shower and the next thing he knew he woke up in a contorted position with cold water cascading around him. He didn't tell me about it, but I knew something was wrong. He kept wincing in pain as he moved about the house, so I asked if he hurt himself during football practice. "No", he said. He fessed up because he is too honest to lie to me and knew he wasn't going to be able to hide it any longer. He was always the quiet one, so talking about his symptoms took a great deal of strength. He told me what happened to him in the shower. Puzzled, I took him back to the doctor who, after multiple x-rays to make sure nothing was broken, referred him to a neurologist for further testing. 

In the meantime, Talon was missing school a lot. Between the doctor appointments and his symptoms, he was falling behind in his school work. Teachers would call to voice their concerns, adding that Talon seemed troubled and withdrawn while in the classroom. All I could do was apologize and promise to keep working on getting caught up. Talon quit football, which I know was a hard choice for a teen in the up-and-coming scene of high school. I admired him for the adult decision he made for himself to put his schoolwork and health first. I waited patiently for our insurance to notify us of our approval to see a specialist. Once it came, I begged for the first available opening on the schedule. I had him in to see the specialist that same week.

The first EEG came back clean, but it was only done for a period of 30 minutes so the neurologist ordered a 24-hour test. He was also sent for an MRI, and that came back negative too. At least he didn't have any tumors or masses in his brain, but as many answers of what it WASN'T, there were still a dozen more possibilities to be ruled out. He was sent home with an EEG unit to track his symptoms and hopefully capture an episode on his brain waves over the course of a full day. That 24-hour test came back negative too. He didn't have any dizzy spells during the actual tests, so the neurologist decided to put him on an anti-seizure medication to see if that made any improvements. It did help for a little bit, but then it stopped helping altogether. Meanwhile, his symptoms kept getting worse.

I wasn't the only one researching his symptoms to find answers. He was trying to find answers too. I shouldn't have been surprised that he would research his own symptoms, as he loved to learn and was borderline genius. What I didn't know is that I was researching only half his symptoms because that was all I knew about - the things I could see experience with my eyes and ears - and he was researching another set of symptoms entirely. As honest as he was, he was scared to tell me about what else he was experiencing.