The Student News Website of Francis Howell North High School.

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The Student News Website of Francis Howell North High School.

FHNtoday.com

The Student News Website of Francis Howell North High School.

FHNtoday.com

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The Collector Store

Kennedy is diagnosed with a rare condition, but chooses to work to better the situation

For sophomore Meghan Kennedy, Aug. 16 started off like any normal day.

It was the third day of school, the first full day, and she went about her usual routine like normal, getting up in the morning and headed off to school, being dropped off at school by her mother with her twin sister Erin.
It was in the middle of her first hour while taking notes that she began to notice something was wrong.
“It was really weird,” Meghan said. “I was looking at notes. There was a blue background behind it, and I could see the background, but not the words. And on my paper, I could see the lines and the white, but not the words I wrote. And the bottom part of my left eye got really blurry. It was like [my eye] was selecting what it saw.”
From there on out, the symptoms only got worse. Meghan began to suffer from a severe headache, was taken to the nurses’ office, and then sent home, whereupon her mother drove her to the emergency room.
There, Meghan was put through a CAT scan, which ruled out the possibility of a tumor.
“It was good that it wasn’t a tumor,” Meghan said. “Which would’ve been bad. It would’ve caused panic.”

While Meghan was in the hospital, Erin sat unknowingly through the rest of her classes until the end of the day.
“When Mom picked me up, she said ‘Meghan is in the hospital, she’s been there all day, there’s something wrong with her eye’,” Erin said. “So, I had to go to the hospital too. I was kinda scared. They didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her, so I was a little scared. But I’m a tough girl, so it was okay.”

The following day, Meghan had to endure more testing, including an MRI, to further rule out the possibility of a tumor, which the CAT scan could’ve missed. After the MRI, she got a spinal tap to check the fluid pressure in her spine.
“It sucked,” Meghan said. “Because even though my back was numb, every time the doctor would stick the needle in, he’d hit a vein, and they couldn’t figure out how to get it in. So they had to do it in the X-Ray room. That whole weekend was a blur, they had me on drugs the entire time.”

Though, her complications didn’t end there.
“The next day, I had to go back and get a blood patch, because it wasn’t healing right,” Meghan said. “And I was leaking spinal fluid, and it would give me a headache every time I stood up.”

All of the tests revealed that Meghan was suffering from a rare condition called PseudoTumor Cerebra (PTC), which is a situation in which increased fluid builds up behind the eyes and presses on the eye vessels. While it’s not technically a tumor, it has all of the symptoms of one. Since it’s rare and not much is known about it, there’s no definitive answer as to whether it will improve or get worse.

However, since the cause of her problems was identified, and was proved to be not life threatening at that point, Meghan was allowed to go back to school. While attempting to return to her normal life, complications struck again.
“I began to have really bad anxiety for some reason,” Meghan said. “It was really weird. I felt that I was doing everything wrong and that I was for sure going to fail everything. It’s weird because I’d never felt like that about school. So I went to the neurologist I was seeing, and he put me on Cymbalta, which just made it worse.”

Cymbalta, a chemical anti-depressant, is not recommended for patients under the age of 18. At 15, Meghan is a few years short of this mark, and the tolls it had on her were great. Instead of lessening her depression, it just made it worse.
“I think it definitely stressed out my mom and Erin because they didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t know what was going on,” Meghan said. “And it must’ve been hard to watch because I would just break into tears sometimes because of the Cymbalta.”

During her depression, Erin worked hard to help Meghan as much as possible.
“I wanted to help her,” Erin said. “But she was just like ‘get away from me, I’m crying,’. But I just stuck around and tried to make her happy.”

After going back to her neurologist and being taken off of Cymbalta, Meghan still felt the chemical effects for several weeks, and was unable to come back to school until after Fall Break. To make up for the near quarter of school work she’s missed, Meghan has enlisted the help of an at-home tutor and dropped most of her classes, only attending school fifth and sixth hour. There have also been a few changes to her home life.
“We have to take care of Meghan a bit more,” Erin said. “We have to make sure she’s okay everyday and that she’s doesn’t have headaches. We also can’t be out too long, so that Meghan doesn’t get tired and start having eye problems.”

While things are complicated now as a result of her sickness, both Erin and Meghan remain optimistic that things will improve.
“I know that Meghan’s attitude will go back to normal,” Erin said. “But she’ll still have some of the medical conditions, since they don’t know if it’ll go away. But we just have to keep on our toes about it, and we’ll get back to the normal tune of life.”

Through her entire ordeal, Meghan still remains positive about her situation.
“It’s not going to kill me, either way,” Meghan said. “A lot of people tend to jump to that conclusion. It’s hard to put it into terms that people can understand, so it’s really confusing. But probably by next year, I would’ve forgotten all about it. Hopefully, unless it decides to get worse. But it’s not going to be the end of the world.”

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