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I always wondered if there were places who might want to look at Reye’s survivors’ brains and stuff, whether or not they pay any sort of compensation for volunteers. There are so few of us, and Reye’s is on the decline because people are now more aware of the dangers of aspirin combined with the flu and chicken pox (and vaccines are making c.p. on the decline, too). I am an “intact” survivor because unlike the vast majority of survivors, I do not have any physical impairments (aside from a slight speech slur which I find singing actually helps diminish).
Anyway, yes, I’d be very interested. My father co-founded a chapter of the National Reye’s Syndrome Foundation in the early 80’s, and they still make donations to the NRSF every year (and my name’s published in the newsletters, yaddayadda…). They’d drug-induced a coma so my brain and body could overcome it, and I had the whole “light at the end of the tunnel” vision, remember waking up, and even somehow retain memories of being a baby, which is highly unusual, but I remember way more than most. Must have been something going on in the brain.
I did look it up…a side-effect of Reye’s does include ADD / ADHD, but I guess it’s harder to study because of how few survivors there are and that most are impaired physically or cognitively.
I gotta log off and go somewhere, but I’ll have to return to this later and look those things up. “Add to To-Do List!!” I scream at myself.
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