Undiagnosed Conditions

[liamsarah]

I have an 18 mo old son who I brought to the pediatrician last week due to on-going balance issues. I thought it was linked to fluid in the ear. The pediatrician had me bring him to a neurologist the next day and now he's scheduled for both an MRI and a 24 hour EEG video digitrace, and I'm starting to wonder if this is all necessary? He's walked for 5 months. Throughout this time he's just never completely found his balance. He'll be fine for much of the day sometimes but then it's like the floor wobbles on him or becomes non-level and he needs to catch himself, sometimes he falls. Sometimes when he starts to walk it's in a zig-zag while he gets his balance. The neurologist said it could be something in his head/brain, seizures or migraines. Anyone have history with such an issue or know if this sounds serious enough for all the tests?

[Davy9]

I don't know how severe your child is but we had a similar experience with one of our kids. All of our kids are adopted so we had no real health history to go by. As a toddler this boy was extremely timid and sensitive. He would walk but only when he could hold onto something. It was not severe and we thought it more pysch than anything. If you gave him helium balloons he would walk because he was holding onto something. Take them away and he immediately dropped. It seemed like his feet were terribly sensitive. Once he was walking solo he hated texture changes on what he would walk on. Grass made him cry in fits.

He was delayed in many ways. He was a huge boy and always rather clumsy for his size. He had speech impediments as well. He was playing football in in HS (he ended up at 6' 7" and 300+ lbs) and got a concussion. He had a cranial MRI done in assessing the concussion. HIs brain was fine but they found that he had cervical a stenosis high in the neck (like at C2). His spinal cord was extremely pinched and had been since birth. He had to stop playing football and remains at risk. (Now divorced his mother is afraid of the surgery to correct this.)

I do not know if any of this is related. He has no other overt neuro diseases or symptoms. He remains clumsy to this day. It would be nice to see if that would be at all remedied by releasing the pressure this high in his spinal column.

[liamsarah]

Thank you very much for your post. It doesn't appear to be very similar as my son isn't timid about walking but it does get me thinking about what alternate causes may be out there.