visual hallucinations

[chrisw]

Some of you have mentioned hallucinations as a symptom of Pandas. When my son was at the height of his worst exacerbation, he asked me what the blue lights were outside. He began to describe something like fireflies, but they had a blue light, were greater in number and moved faster. I have since talked to another mother whose PANDAS son described seeing almost exactly the same thing. He called them blue fairies. I am assuming that this is a symptom resulting from the brain inflammation, but I have been very curious to know if other PANDAS kids have/are seeing this as well. Please share if others have visual hallucinations. I'm wondering if this is another "hallmark" of PANDAS. My son has been on Azith. for about 2 weeks, and I asked him the other night when we were outside if he was still seeing the "blue lights". He said, "no". I took that as a good sign. Also, I was wondering how many others kids have had psoriasis? My son also developed mild psoriasis on his scalp during his worst exacerbation. It has also gone away since prophylactic abx. Just curious.

Blessings,

Christie

[EAMom]

Hi Christie,

my dd got migraines and ocular migraines (bubbles, ghosts) with PANDAS. Sometimes the ocular migraines did not have a headache with them, just visual stuff. No blue lights that I am aware of though!

[bronxmom2]

Hmmm... mine was complaining one day at school (when his symptoms were bad) that everything had a slightly green tinge. At the time I assumed he was making this up.

[chrisw]

My son also said that when the lights were out in his room, everything that was white in color looked like it was glowing green. HMMM....strange. He also described everything looking like a fuzzy TV screen when the lights were out. Visual Snow? He is 9 and is able to describe these things to me. I tried not to make a big deal about it bc I didn't want to make it an attention getting issue, even though he is not really an attention seeking kid. When he first asked me about the blue lights, he did it as if he thought everyone saw them. Strange.

Christie

[pmoreno]

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Seeing bright lights (or white lights) especially at night, was one of the first symptoms that Gaby exhibited when all this started for her 1 1/2 years ago. The mention of bright lights eventually went away (after a few months), but returned last December and remained for about 3 months with increasing problems, ie. seeing the white lights in school and suddenly yelling out and hitting at them in the air and getting very angry because they bothered her. This has stopped again (thank goodness) as of about a few weeks ago. Pat

[browneyesmom]

This thread concerns me a bit as my daughter's hallucinations are not the same as what I am reading here. She mentions visual and auditory hallucinations, sometimes, the visual ones... she describes in detail.

 

My daughter first mentioned visual hallucinations this past fall. I initially thought she was making it up and didn't give much attention, thinking it would go away. She said she saw a friend who had recently moved to another country in a park-like area (there were no people in the area) as well as our golden retriever (no dogs there either) as we were leaving a store owned by friends of ours.

 

She'd occasionally mention them after that, until this January when everything seemed to explode for her and they increased as well. She's mentioned faces, sunflower coming out of the teapot on the stove, monsters in the family room and bedroom, her own image... most of the time, she seems to realize they are not real because she knows they are not rational. Other times, they frighten her.

 

This past week, she told us that she saw most everything change to different colors (as in, things had a different tinge as mentioned in this thread, some had several colors) and another time, she said (after an outburst) that during an outburst, both my eyes and my husbands eyes had turned black with X's over them. Mine are brown, his are blue and the lights were on in the room. This was the outburst in which she insisted we were trying to kill her and the next day, told me she was going to kill me during an outburst. At the pediatrician's office less than an hour later, she said she had no memory of either event.

 

I don't recall her ever mentioning seeing blue lights or bright lights, but she has complained about being sensitive to lights.

 

Sometimes, the things she says she sees are so unusual, I am unsure whether to believe them or not and of course, there is no way to know for certain. I do know she is extremely resistant to attending school at this point and wonder sometimes if she might exagerate, but I have no way to know... it might be the case that she truly sees (and hears) everything she describes. It's certainly not the only unusual issue about this. What I do know is that she is a very sick child. It's a lot to wrap one's head around, how sick these kids get.

[colleenrn]

When my daughter was in the first year of PANDAS at age 5-6, she told me oe night that she kept seeing a red devil poking it's head around the corner. This scared me to death as I was a psych nurse at the time and I thought "is she psychotic?" She was able to tell me she knew it wasn't really there, but she was seeing it. That was the last time she ever mentioned seeing anything.

 

One of my sons, the day after his 5th birthday, woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely terrified, saying he saw big grey spiders and gray masses flying around the room. This went on for hours. That was the last time, thank God, that has happened. I was convinced, and still am, that the trigger was red 40 dye. When I ordered his cake I asked them not to put any red dye b/c all of my kids have reacted to it, but they made the whole cake covered in black icing (a racetrack) which must have had red dye. He could have had strep at the time b/c it was in January and none of my kids were on prophylactic antibiotics at the time.

Colleen

[pmoreno]

At the onset of Gaby's PANDAS she used to talk about seeing a green iguana who was mean (in addition to the white lights - who she said were actually people). She also saw ghosts and was very fearful about falling asleep. This sleep anxiety and preoccupation with ghosts or iguanas has not returned since it went away over a year ago. As I've mentioned before, the symptoms can change so dramatically in the kids from episode to episode and even sometimes within the same episode. I think it has to do with the particular neurons in the brain that are being affected at that time. As the brain heals over weeks and months, some of those behaviors get better or go away and as new damage is being done (either through strep or other antigens - like viruses, vaccines, etc) new areas of the brain are affected so you see new behaviors and sometimes the same areas as previously will be affected and you might see repeated behaviors from the past.

[greeneyes48072]

My son has just the last few days been saying that he keeps seeing a burglar outside the window. I mentioned it to our Dr and he said he believes it's more age related than PANDAS related. It had only happended at night when I had first spoke to him, but then yesterday as we were driving home from school, he claims he saw the burglar on the side of the road. He was also complaining about blurry vision. It worries me since this has not happened before...

[Indigo]

My dd experienced hallucinations at the height of PANDAS (when I had recurrent strep), however, she was on Concerta at the time and once she was taken off of it, she did not have any more.

[kim]

My son also developed mild psoriasis on his scalp during his worst exacerbation

 

Cris,

 

My boys have a BIG strep history, but I have never considered them PANDAS due mostly to lack of abrupt onset. My youngest son does have some OCD, my oldest son only seems to exhibit it during some tic flairs. I have psoriasis, altho I've never paid any attention to it until recently. Just a spot on my elbow and a little at hair line on back of my neck, until I had this full body rash that correlated with infected elbow. My youngest son has some small bumps on one elbow. It doesn't look like psoriasis at this point, but now I'm a little concerned.

 

I was looking at the relationship btwn vit A and D which can be involved in psoriasis ( I believe both the boys and I have a problem in this area) this morning. A deficiency in vit A can be involved here

Rhodopsin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopsin

 

and a vit D deficiency can result in a vit A deficiency (my take so far). Wonder if anyone else thinks this could be involved in photosensitivity and some of these "color" issues? Looks interesting, but I haven't spent enough time, to see if it really makes sense

 

 

Also, wanted to mention that during a strep infection last year with what I think was an explosive stomach virus at the same time, my youngest son complained of unwanted thoughts and everything "looking green." He was sitting in the Dr.s office looking out the window on a gloomy, cloudy afternoon. He kept insisting everything looked green. He was really really sick.

 

Wanted to ask if anyone has ever noticed anything that looks like "chicken skin," on their children? Again, looking at vit A and D and something called keratosis pilaris.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratosis_pilaris

 

didn't know whether to post this on strep/psoriasis, vit d thread or what. If anyone cares to discuss anthing other than the "light" issues, maybe we could move to more appropriate thread.

[colleenrn]

Kim,

My PANDAS daughter has that right now on her arms- the "chicken skin" (keratosis pilaris) AND has had it for months. I could not figure out what it was, but it did not seem to bother her. Is this strep related??

Thanks!

Colleen

[kim]

Colleen,

 

Are the bumps flesh colored or inflammed?

 

There is one related condition, Pityriasis Rubra Pilaris, that does mention strep, but most of the pictures look like a lot more of a severe condition than just Keratosis Pilaris.

I think some of the google image pictures might be the more striking or dramatic pics. Since keratosis pilaris is so common, it's hard to know whether it's significant or not. I know my youngest son turned orange from head to toe around 1 yr old. I was told by ped that my oldest son had keratosis rash (just looked like a rash, nothing dramatic)on his face at one point, and I have had this infection induced skin thing now. I also just had some red bumps break out on my leg. Before they turned red, they were just flesh colored. I had stopped taking my 3 fish oil per day, when that happened. If there were a higher incidence of this with PANDAS or non PANDAS with tics, would be interesting to know, again for the relationship btwn vit D, A, and possibly fatty acid metabolism? Christie mentioning a mild scalp outbreak of psoriasis with her son during a PANDAS exacerbation, really makes me wonder if there is an overlap here for some.

 

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1107742-overview

 

Case reports have described PRP occurring after streptococcal infections

 

 

http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/kerato...l%3FpageNum%3D2

 

Keratosis Pilaris

 

Images

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...sa%3DG%26um%3D1

 

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...sa%3DG%26um%3D1

 

 

Vit A article

 

http://www.innvista.com/health/nutrition/vitamins/a.htm

[thereishope]

My son twice said he saw bugs and they were on him. He would hit himself to get them off.