I Have a Rare Disease That Makes Me See Demon Faces Everywhere. It’s, Uh, Not Fun.

  • 📰 Slate
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 59 sec. here
  • 5 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 37%
  • Publisher: 51%

Mental-Health News

Medicine,What-Its-Like,Disability

When I look at human faces, I see dragons, demons, and nauseating potato people.

, people tell us, well, what it’s like to have experiences many of us have not even imagined. In this entry, we spoke to Maggie McCart, an administrative assistant at an Illinois university, who suffers from an extremely rare disease called prosopometamorphopsia, which inflicts patients with a variety of wild hallucinations when they look at someone’s face.

Other times, these disorders can get truly bizarre and hallucinogenic, like a bad acid trip. The skin texture on a face can change, or their noses or eyes seem to be stretched and exaggerated in grotesque, plastic-y ways. Sometimes a person’s face and mouth are replaced by geometric shapes—triangles, hexagons, and so on. When that happens, I call it “going Picasso” because they remind me of his cubist paintings.

So for most of my life, I did my best to ignore the symptoms and go about my day. I learned to recognize people by their shoes, or their clothes, or the way they walked. When I’d go on trips with friends and I’d get separated from them, I’d stay where I was and wait for them to find me—rather than walking off with someone who simplylike them. I could manage.

But you know what? At this point, the distorted faces I see don’t scare me anymore. I’m used to it. I’ve made peace with it. Yes, when I first saw that dragon it was truly terrifying. Stuff like that would make me gasp. But now I’m able to relax, take a deep breath, remember that it’s just my stupid brain acting up. People don’t look like dragons, and thank God for

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

Medicine What-Its-Like Disability

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 716. in US

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

This rare muscle disease play can rally more than 50%, BofA saysThe bank initiated research coverage with a buy rating.
Source: CNBC - 🏆 12. / 72 Read more »

– Scientists Unravel Cause of Rare Neurological Disease After 25 Years of ResearchScience, Space and Technology News 2024
Source: SciTechDaily1 - 🏆 84. / 68 Read more »

People with rare longevity mutation may also be protected from cardiovascular diseasePatients with growth hormone receptor deficiency, or Laron syndrome, appear to have lower than average risk factors for cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily - 🏆 452. / 53 Read more »

After 25 years, researchers uncover genetic cause of rare neurological diseaseSpinocerebellar ataxia 4 is a devastating progressive movement disease that can begin as early as the late teens. Now, a multinational research team has conclusively identified the genetic difference that causes the disease, bringing answers to families and opening the door to future treatments.
Source: ScienceDaily - 🏆 452. / 53 Read more »

Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease Plus HIV Ups Risk for CVD but Not Liver DiseaseA large study reveals an increased risk for adverse cardiovascular events but not for liver disease progression in adults with MASLD disease and HIV infection.
Source: Medscape - 🏆 386. / 55 Read more »

Donor found for Virginia infant with rare lung disease at Texas Children's, awaits transplantKylie Overfield, the 5-month-old from Virginia battling a rare lung disease, is awaiting transplant surgery at Texas Children's after a donor was found. Her mom says she will also need heart surgery.
Source: FOX26Houston - 🏆 448. / 53 Read more »