Woman who thought she had pinkeye was actually suffering a 'functional' STROKE

A woman who thought she was suffering pinkeye was actually having a stroke.

Nicole Lamoureux, 51, a TikTok business influencer, thought she was having an allergic reaction when her eyelid swelled up and turned pink last week.

While driving to the hospital with her husband, her arms began shaking and she started speaking much more slowly.

Doctors told her she had suffered a 'functional stroke', which is caused by the nervous system functioning abnormally instead of damage to the brain. 

Nicole Lamoureux, 51, a business strategy influencer, thought she was having an allergic reaction when her eyelid swelled up and turned pink

Doctors told her she had suffered a functional stroke, sometimes also called a 'stroke mimic', which is when there is a problem with how to brain sends and receives information to the rest of the body

'My brain cannot connect with my other extremities very well,' she said in a TikTok video viewed by more than 1.3 million people.

FND can begin without warning and impacts how the brain and body send and receive signals between them.

Unlike a stroke, which shows up in specific areas on brain scans, FND affects the brain's messaging mechanisms which are not visible this way, leading to FND being too often overlooked by medical professionals, say experts. 

The symptoms of functional neurological disorder (FND) are real and are caused by an issue with the brain's messaging capabilities.

For instance, people may be unable to send a message to their legs to make them move, even though there may not be any damage to the legs or the brain on a scan. 

This is why patients with FND are often dismissed and told their symptoms are 'all in their head.' 

FND can include a wide variety of neurological symptoms, such as limb weakness or seizures. 

Nicole took to TikTok to warn her 44,000 followers not to dismiss unexplained symptoms and to get them checked by a doctor.

Pinkeye, the inflammation or infection of the outer membrane of the eyeball and inner eyelid, is most often caused by a viral infection. It can also be caused by a bacterial infection or an allergic reaction.

Initial stroke-like symptoms, such as swelling of the face and trouble seeing in one eye in Nicole's case, are likely due to physiological arousal, according to the Journal of Neuropsychiatry. 

This could be due to stress, for example, and could cause a migraine. 

Nicole Lamoureux, a business strategy influencer, is also the president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics

Panic and anxiety 'trigger further automatic arousal, adding to initial symptoms,' the Journal said.

Niccole now has limited mobility on her right leg and 'sometimes my right arm doesn't work either,' she said.

Limb weakness may occur because of an 'abnormal prediction of weakness... at various levels of the motor control pathway.'

In order words, patients expect their leg and arm will not move, so it doesn't. 

In one TikTok video Nicole can be seen dragging her right leg while she using a walker to try to walk.

Symptoms of FND may include loss of motor control, sensory symptoms, speech problems, seizures, visual symptoms, cognitive problems and bladder and bowel problems.

FND affects roughly 12 out of 100,000 individuals.

The exact cause of FND is unknown. Sometimes, FND occurs after a stressful event or in those with a history of emotional or physical trauma.

When stress pathways are triggered, there is an increase in cortisol levels and an enzyme called α-Amylase, which takes a toll on the body. Research suggests that chronic activation of stress pathways may lead to symptom onset.

'Physiological responses to stress can become a conditioned response, and over time, the threshold for the physiological response falls until symptoms occur in response to minor stressors or even the memory of an event,' researchers wrote in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry.

Nicole said she had a 'massive migraine' right before the stroke, as well as what she thought was pink eye and swelling in her face.

'I've been under massive stress for the last couple of years,' she said. 

'Please put your safety and your self care first. Please remember to take care of yourself and not put everyone else's needs above your own,' Nicole added.

Treatment for FND includes physical and speech therapy to improve patients' symptoms.

'If you wake up and you think you have pink eye... and you get medicine for pink eye but it's not pink eye - you go to the hospital,' she said.