Woman who thought she had pinkeye was actually suffering a 'functional' STROKE trends now
A woman who thought she was suffering pinkeye was actually having a stroke.
Nicole Lamoureux, 51, a TikTok business influencer, thought she was having an allergic reaction when her eyelid swelled up and turned pink last week.
While driving to the hospital with her husband, her arms began shaking and she started speaking much more slowly.
Doctors told her she had suffered a 'functional stroke', which is caused by the nervous system functioning abnormally instead of damage to the brain.
Nicole Lamoureux, 51, a business strategy influencer, thought she was having an allergic reaction when her eyelid swelled up and turned pink
Doctors told her she had suffered a functional stroke, sometimes also called a 'stroke mimic', which is when there is a problem with how to brain sends and receives information to the rest of the body
'My brain cannot connect with my other extremities very well,' she said in a TikTok video viewed by more than 1.3 million people.
FND can begin without warning and impacts how the brain and body send and receive signals between them.
Unlike a stroke, which shows up in specific areas on brain scans, FND affects the brain's messaging mechanisms which are not visible this way, leading to FND being too often overlooked by medical professionals, say experts.
The symptoms of functional neurological disorder (FND) are real and are caused by an issue with the brain's messaging capabilities.
For instance, people may be unable to send a message to their legs to make them move, even though there may not be any damage to the legs or the brain on a scan.
This is why patients with FND are often dismissed and told their symptoms are 'all in their head.'
FND can include a wide variety of neurological symptoms, such as limb weakness or seizures.
Nicole took to TikTok to warn her 44,000 followers not to dismiss unexplained symptoms and to get them checked by a doctor.
Pinkeye, the inflammation or infection of the outer membrane
