{"id":15762,"date":"2025-06-30T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/?page_id=15762"},"modified":"2025-06-30T11:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T11:01:00","slug":"shehlas-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/stories\/functional-seizures\/shehlas-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Shehla's story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>How it started<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was living an adventurous life, running a business, travelling around the world and my fitness was great. Well, that\u2019s what I believed. I didn\u2019t think about illnesses often until I began feeling fatigued. I thought it was just that time of the year (winter), and when I went to have my bloods checked, I was told I was healthy. The medical staff said it was just low Iron and Vitamin D because of my ethnicity.&nbsp; A few months later, I experienced:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Involuntary movements<\/li><li>Functional seizures<\/li><li>Drop attacks&nbsp;<\/li><li>Memory loss<\/li><li>Fatigue<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Medical Trauma<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was as though someone had served a menu of symptoms, and I was wondering which one to battle every day. I did not have the best experience with my medical staff; I was told to be more positive. A couple of trips to A&amp;E ended with the same narrative of being told that I was sensitive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the first time I had been to A&amp;E. I thought the medical staff were meant to help, but I was wrong. I fought for an MRI scan, and my test results revealed nothing. I was assured by my neurologist that I just had to go back to what I was doing before. They said you have something called \u2018FND\u2019. I didn\u2019t know what that actually meant, just that there was no clear pathway or treatment plan. There was an assumption that it wasn\u2019t a big deal, so people around me thought it would pass.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I found it tough; I was bedridden for months and couldn\u2019t really see a way out. I\u2019d spend hours staring at the ceiling, wondering what every hour of pain looked like.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Moving Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a year, I had to face the fact that no one was coming to save me. The first thing I did was find a private therapist, one that went on a journey with me and understood the culture I came from. I then changed my medical practice and was finally referred, although it took a while, I finally felt listened to. It meant accepting that my life had changed and I wasn\u2019t going to be doing the things I was doing before. I began podcasting \u2018A Spoonful of Recovery\u2019 and set-up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutme.group\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"www.aboutme.group\">www.aboutme.group<\/a> to help advocate with lived experiences. I found sharing stories helped, even from different illnesses, because the experiences with medical teams and society in general are not too different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shehla describes how the experience of having FND led her to advocate for people with lived experiences<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":1461,"menu_order":257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template\/story-details-page-template.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15762"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15765,"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15762\/revisions\/15765"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neurosymptoms.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}