Collaboration puts Smethwick student on the road to recovery – and university
A grateful patient is off to study at university after a diagnosis in Birmingham and life-saving treatment in Wolverhampton to recover from a rare disease.
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Deeksha Bali, aged 18 from Smethwick suffered headaches and struggled to walk after contracting a condition in June which caused seizures and left her unable to breathe or move. She spent a total of 56 days in hospital and had to learn to talk and walk again.
A disease called Autoimmune GFAP Astrocytopathy, or GFAP astropathy, was diagnosed by the clinical immunology service at Birmingham in collaboration with Dr Suneesh Thilak, an intensive care consultant at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT).
The disease sees the immune system attacked by a protein of the nervous system – Deeksha’s case was the first one diagnosed in the West Midlands in the last decade.
After initially being admitted to City Hospital Birmingham, Deeksha was transferred to the Integrated Critical Care Unit (ICCU) at New Cross on July 7.
