Seizures in Shiliguri

I was in India recently to do my elective terms in Indian hospitals. Whilst in Bangalore, i lost notebook in which i had been keeping a journal of sorts, jotting down my experiences and suchlike. So i am going to attempt to recall what was lost and write about some of the patients, who for some particular reason or for no reason at all, i can still remember.....

The first patient who comes to mind is a little boy, or to be exact, his mother. Just as i was beginning to see this child, something else came up that i had to sort out (for a previous patient), so one of the doctors offerred to see this boy. But the mother would have none of it. She insisted that they would wait for me: "aap hee dekh lijiye, hum theherte hein". They had come all the way from Shiliguri, in northern Bengal, to NIMHANS, Bangalore, for specialist treatment (obviously i wasnt the specialist, i was only the preliminary guy who saw the patients first). In the few minutes that i did have with them, i asked a few questions about Shiliguri, it being a place that i wanted to go to (only as a transit to Sikkim, but still...). And for this little bit of curiosity, that lady was willing to wait an unknown amount of time, to have her son seen by me. I felt touched by this episode. I hadnt really done anything for them, but they wanted to wait for me.....I often think about that kid; how's he doing; is he still alive (he was quite sick with very severe epilepsy...).

The next patients that come to mind are these two kids who had a condition called SSPE, which occurs in kids who have had (and recovered) from measles. It is the most devastating diagnosis to have to give to parents. SSPE causes a slow, inexorable mental deterioration that always lead to death within a few years. First, these kids start having random jerks which make them fall over. Eventually, they get more of these uncontrolled movements as well loss of mental function until there is nothing but a shell left. The first of the kids that i saw with SSPE was end stage. He had the barest minimum of brain function; his father and brother had taken him to all kinds of doctors and finally decided to come to NIMHANS after being told the same thing by everyone else. When asked what they wanted, the brother simply said "treatment". The father was in tears....The second kid was an only child in a poor family. He was extremely bright- he'd been awarded various scholarships to top schools in Bengal. But a few months ago, he began to jerk and lose his 'intelligence'. Desperately, the family came to Bangalore, only to be told the diagnosis of SSPE. I have never seen a person as devastated as tha