While being diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis (AE) in the first place is scary, failing treatments that normally give people their lives back is despairing. Recognition of the failure is slow. You’re told to hang tight and be patient for the immune system to adjust; but as months pass by without sustained improvements, the feeling that something is wrong begins to take hold.
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Many people have been asking me about Actemra (tocilizumab) given that I started a monthly dosing regimen of it a few months ago. Below you’ll find some common questions I’ve been fielding.
I’m walking down the street of a major American metropolis, bagel in hand, rushing to find a park bench so I can log in to Zoom. I look down at my feet, pause, and whip out my phone.
Perfect. This will do. *shutter click*
Leave it to a patch of dingy city sidewalk to embody my feelings of living with an inflamed brain.
Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a nightmare.
Internists don’t want to touch it. Psychiatrists look on with sympathy. And most neurologists would rather not acknowledge it at all, unless scores of paraclinical investigations are screaming in their face.
So you might begin to imagine how dejecting it feels to be the one actually living with this illness.
The plane lifts. Like many traveling for the first time since the pandemic began, anxious feelings churn beneath my calm exterior.
Is it safe to fly? Will I regret this later?
The world that doctors live in…
The classic story arc of autoimmune encephalitis goes something like this: a patient presents to the hospital emergency room with an abrupt onset of psychotic features that include hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety, and strange behavioural changes.