Mother Heartbroken After Doctor Confirms Toddler Has Dementia
Dementia isn’t the most physically debilitating disease that a person must endure. After all, arthritis ties your joints in knots, cancer strips the flesh from your frame, and emphysema snatches the breath from your lungs.
Despite all the horrors these illnesses can visit upon you, I’d say that dementia is just as frightening. Unlike the others, it steals your mind, robbing you of your core self.
But at least dementia only strikes the elderly — right? Not so fast: A story out of the United Kingdom shows that the debilitating neurological condition can strike at a heartbreakingly young age.
According to Metro, 25-year-old Rebecca Griffiths from Stoke-on-Trent, England, became concerned when her son Reggie began to exhibit some odd behaviors. The two-year-old toddler wasn’t growing as quickly as other children.
What’s more, he had started rocking in repetitive patterns. That was when Griffiths decided to take him to a doctor.
“At first, they thought it was autism,” she explained. “He was transferred to Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital after a pediatrician at Stoke noticed the symptoms.”
But it wasn’t autism. Physicians discovered that Reggie had mucopolysaccharidosis type III, which is also called Sanfilippo syndrome.
The Daily Mail reported that only one out of every 70,000 people have the condition. A genetic malady, it affects the brain in a manner similar to Alzheimer’s disease, which has earned it the terrible nickname of childhood dementia.
Though Sanfilippo syndrome attacks the central nervous system, it can also target other parts of the body. The National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Genetic Testing Registry says, “Affected children often initially have delayed speech and behavior problems.
“They may become restless, destructive, anxious, or aggressive, and some display features of autism spectrum disorder, which is a condition characterized by difficulty with social interactions and communication. … This condition causes progressive intellectual disability and the loss of previously acquired skills (developmental regression).”
Why? Most of our bodies have the ability to flush out certain toxins. But Reggie’s doesn’t.
Over time, certain toxins will continue to build up in his brain. That’s what leads to a terrible mental regression in the disease’s final stages.
“There are three stages, and he is in the second one where he is hyperactive, non-verbal and doesn’t sleep and his behavior can be hard to deal with,” Griffiths said. “The third stage is deterioration and that’s when you know they don’t have long left.”
Sadly, there’s not much hope for little Reggie. Experts have never seen anyone with Sanfilippo syndrome live into his twenties.
But Griffiths has refused to let only ill come from her son’s tragedy. She and her husband have begun raising money for the MPS Society, a nonprofit that funds research for the condition.
“I don’t think we’ll see a cure in Reggie’s lifetime, but I hope in the future someone will be able to say my child used to have that,” she said. “It would be of some comfort in the future if we can say we’d contributed towards a cure in any way we can.”
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