State Rep. Tricia Byrnes Is Looking for the Filmmaker Who’ll Investigate FND
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Missouri State Rep. Tricia Byrnes is seeking a filmmaker to investigate Functional Neurological Disorder. She says hundreds of families report children were labeled with FND before doctors fully checked seizures and loss of mobility, and that second opinions were blocked.
Maddie Aumann: From an FND Diagnosis to Maddie’s Law
FND Nope
Moderator
Maddie Aumann was diagnosed with FND before genetic testing identified a rare SCN9A disorder. Her mother, Christine Aumann, describes how the FND label continued to affect Maddie’s care even after that discovery, ultimately helping inspire Maddie’s Law.
Is FND falsifiable?
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability, first presented in Logik der Forschung (1934) and later translated into English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), is one of the most influential frameworks for separating science from pseudoscience.
Differential Diagnosis: Psychopharmacology
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Interestingly psychopharmacological influences (how drugs affect the mind and behaviour) are known to produce neurological symptoms.
FND: Philosophy Masquerading as Diagnosis - Part 2
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
The first thing to note is that FND is a product of medical constructivism (in contrast to medical realism). So if we are to buy into this philosophy, what exactly does that mean?
Functional Fracture Disorder
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Functional Fracture Disorder (FFD) is that mysterious middle ground between Orthopaedics and Psychiatry where mostly men show up limping and wincing, convinced their bones have shattered—yet no X-ray, scan, or magic spell can find a crack.
Kairos moment: Gastrointestinal system
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
A short summary about my wife's gastroenterological journey that possibly led to her current neurological distress.
A Tale of Four Neurologists
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Over the years, navigating my wife's extremely complex medical journey, we have met a lot of doctors along the way: some great, some mediocre, and some negligent. Looking back retrospectively, there are a lot of things I wish we had done differently.
Differential Diagnosis: Endometriosis
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Ironically although doctors present the FND framework as a more evolved replacement for outdated concepts like hysteria, conditions such as endometriosis may still be wrongly attributed to FND, echoing the same historical misattributions that labelled unexplained female symptoms as psychological rather than physiological.
Differential Diagnosis: Wilson Disease
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
Around 1912, British neurologist Samuel Wilson described a condition he termed progressive lenticular degeneration, linking liver disease with neurological symptoms; this would later come to be known as Wilson disease.
FND: Philosophy Masquerading as Diagnosis - Part 1
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
FND is a matter of philosophy, not fact. It is a disorder that was conceptually defined into existence, unlike diseases discovered through measurable physiology. The very idea that the expression of a symptom that cannot be explained somehow correlates to a "brain software" problem is speculative and should be treated as such.
Kairos moment: Vestibular system
Christoff
Spousal caregiver
When observing my wife’s medical condition retrospectively, I try to identify what my late father used to call Kairos moments. In other words, identifying the tipping points, the moments in time that brought us to where we are now.
