Support for Brother's Medical Journey

So a lot of people have asked about my brother and what's going on, and the truth is we don't exactly know. On top of having Type 1 diabetes, he has been out of work for a month, hasn't been able to see his kid for a couple of weeks, all thanks to his condition. He has been stuck in his room with a severe migraine, covering his eyes with anything, taking hot baths in the dark, popping every pill the doctors have given him with no relief. He has been to the ED multiple times, seen numerous specialists, had every test done, and no one can come up with anything. So his neurologist is at a loss and decided to transfer him to the University of Tampa. A couple of days ago, his eye started to swell and has just gotten worse. This morning, we got an update that his optic nerve is swelling, causing his eye to bulge. They are running more tests to see why and what else is going on… we will update as we can. Please send any positive thoughts our way!

On another note, him being out of work and having to pay bills, copays, paying for childcare, etc., is really taking a financial toll on him. So I created a GoFundMe to help ease a little financial stress from him!

Thank you to everyone who has reached out to ask what they can do! I will try to keep updated on this post. Feel free to share this post ❤️

Update #1:

Update: still no official diagnosis as of right now but they have several guesses. Just doing more tests to confirm. They started steroids last night and his headache has basically disappeared. But he still cant see and his eyes are wonky lookin.

Small update:

Finally got a room

His migraine is almost completely gone, he has been eating and feeling a little better.

They started him on high dose steroids every 24 hours 2 nights ago, tonight will be the final dose and unsure of the plan after that.

Still waiting to see the internal medicine doc and neurology team today, ophthalmologist has been in this morning and although his vision is nowhere near normal, there has been a slight improvement since yesterday in his vision in both eyes but the left eye is much worse with minimal vision but there has been some progress in the short amount of time. Still uncertain if the vision will come back completely, only time will tell

Not sure if the labs are back because we haven’t seen anyone today but all of the collaborating teams working on Brenden’s case are pretty certain it is Thyroid eye disease and it may or may not be caused by Graves’ disease pending antibody testing.

I’ve been reading up on it and in 10% or so of cases, it has nothing to do with the thyroid, it is just caused by an autoimmune attack to the belly of the eye muscles which causes edema and protrusion of the eyeball and can eventually cause compression of the optic nerve which it has already done, and in some cases the outcome with vision in that eye isn’t very good but we are keeping the faith.

Again, not an official diagnosis but so far everything points to this.

Just 4 short years ago something attacked his pancreas and he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Now potentially another autoimmune disease has developed… we will most definitely be following up with rheumatology once he gets home.

Will update as soon as we know more. Thank you to all that have reached out ❤️