A Florida teenager mystified her parents and doctors with her strange symptoms and behaviors beginning in January. Hallie Hale's parents knew something was seriously wrong with the 13-year-old when they found her on the bathroom floor, unable to see or hear them. What was first thought to be a stroke turned out to be a much more rare and extremely scary medical issue.
Hallie's parents, Dathan and Sarah Beth Hale, told Today that they called 911 after hearing their daughter fall. When paramedics arrived, Hallie's face began drooping and crews decided it was best to airlift her to Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. She was immediately rushed in for bloodwork, an MRI, and a CT scan, but the diagnosis took time.
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Hallie was an active teen prior to her medical emergency.
Her parents said they noticed Hallie was having fine motor troubles before the fall. The once avid dancer was having trouble holding things, doing her makeup, and folding a towel.
"We were going to take her to the pediatrician because, honestly, we thought she had a pinched nerve," Sarah Beth Hale told Today. "Her left side was bothering her."
When she arrived at the hospital, Hallie was not acting like herself, and thankfully, the doctors were quick to help. The morning after the fall, the family met with Dr. Vikram Prakash, who ordered a brain scan. The scan showed an abnormality, with the right side moving faster than the left. The doctor ordered a second MRI with contrast, but the results were normal.
Hallie was diagnosed with migraines.
At first, doctors thought that Hallie had hemiplegic migraines, which caused weakness on the left side of her body. She was sent home with orders for a follow-up appointment. When the family arrived home, Sarah Beth Hale said her daughter went to nap, but when she awoke, she was disoriented.
"She started playing with her clothes. She's very agitated. She didn't know what day it was," Sarah Beth Hale said. "I freaked out because I've never seen her like that."
Again, her parents called 911, but when paramedics arrived, they consulted with physicians who advised them to just monitor their daughter. After she began having hallucinations, however, Dathan and Sarah Beth Hale called Prakash, who asked them to bring Hallie to see him.
Prakash knew what was happening.
The Hales told Today that after an additional scan came back abnormal, Prakash told them that he was going to treat her aggressively and quickly.
"They did two different procedures. The first was to insert a catheter into her jugular vein," Sarah Beth Hale explained. "The other thing they did was a lumbar puncture, where they took her spinal fluid and that was sent off to the Mayo Clinic."
It wasn't migraines. It turns out that Hallie has a rare autoimmune condition called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which causes the brain to attack the NMDA receptor in the brain. This causes frightening personality changes.
Although 60% of patients with the disorder have a benign tumor growing in their body, Hallie Hale did not. But she received the same treatment as those who do.
The teen got worse before she got better.
Prakash's intensive treatment included removing "the antibodies attacking her brain through a treatment called plasmapheresis and then did an infusion with new antibodies, called IVIG, to block the attacking antibodies," per Today.
This can be followed up with other antibody treatments to keep them from attacking the body. After treatment began, the Hales thought that their daughter would be herself again, but she wasn't.
"I thought at the end of treatment, we'd have our daughter back. But we didn't," Sarah Beth Hale said. "It was the second week of rehab, which was about a month after diagnosis, that we really started seeing glimpses of her coming back."
Prakash told Today that the condition takes about two years to treat thoroughly and is challenging to diagnose. "This is a very complex disorder," the doctor said. "It's a constellation of signs and symptoms that lead us into the diagnosis."
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Every day Hallie makes strides during her recovery.
There are good days and bad days, but she is steadily improving with the help of speech, occupational, and physical therapies.
"Most of the time, what Hallie (has), it is misdiagnosed (for) months, weeks, sometimes even years," Sarah Beth Hale explained to Today. "Those kids have permanent damage because of that."
She is still struggling with the left side of her body but plans to return to dance, all in due time. "We're reteaching her how to do math. She can read, and she can write," her mom explained. "Sometimes it's like we have a preschooler trapped in a teenager's body, and sometimes we have our teenager back."
Friends of the family have created a GoFundMe page to aid with the family's medical expenses.
