Brendan: A casual misdiagnosis.
Born and raised in the UK, Brendan moved to Ghana with his parents in 2023. Ghanaian by heritage and upbringing, but new to the country, he settled in rapidly and enthusiastically. A mechanics student, his weekdays are dedicated to his first love, vehicles, and their constituent parts - his weekends spent caring for the family's crop of erratic chickens, and exploring the country's heaving capital, Accra.
Had Brendan stayed in the UK, his future would've been marked by stasis. A childhood autism diagnoses triggered a landslide of systemic failures; placed into a special needs' school in the nineties, he received little in the way of targeted support, and what attention he did receive, was homogeneous and fused into blanket care packages. Being taught alongside pupils with diverse needs - varied sensory impairments, genetic and developmental syndromes, etc., proved challenging, and unsurprisingly, stymied his own learning trajectory. Then there was the ever-evolving, seemingly arbitrary deck of medicine - some prescribed for autism, and some to treat the "ticks doctors attributed to Tourettes syndrome. All offered adverse effects, and little else.As he entered his late teens, this already skeletal support network became all but imperceptible. His local council offered a school-leaver scheme of sorts, but with little scope for higher learning or paid employment, these seemed largely tokenistic.
Brendan experienced years of stagnation, punctuated by brief stints at gardening and pottery schemes, and directionless day trips with a conveyor belt of escorts - untrained, most with no English, and many caught in the grips of drug addiction.During one such day trip, Brendan passed out; hitting his head against concrete paving. This wasn't an isolated event - Brendan had started to experience fainting spells and convulsions. These were attributed to blood sugar surges, and rather incongruously, to anxiety (little else supported this determination). For many British young people and their parents, such experiences are familiar; far from inspiring clinical reevaluation, evolving symptoms often attract additional diagnoses and of course, attendant medication. With little to no access to alternative medical & educational infrastructure, and few safe spaces for second opinions, childhood diagnoses exist as immovable and inescapable identities - with treatments geared at maintenance, not advancement.After almost 4 exasperating decades, Brendan's dad, Ishmael had had enough, and moved the family over to his home county, Ghana. His scepticism about Brendan's diagnosis had never waned, and he got straight to work, certain Ghana's medical system would offer an alternative take and pro-active treatments. He was correct. After a series of scans and complex assessments, it was determined the autism diagnosis had indeed been incorrect.
With the help of a thorough EEG test, doctors found that Brendan was actually on the epileptic spectrum. This explained the fainting spells, and his 'ticks', which were actually myclonic seizures. Now in the care of neurologists and endocrinologists, his treatment plan comprises both herbal and conventional medicines, and his progress is regularly assessed. Why an EEG test had never been offered to Brendan in the UK, would be a mystery, were it not for the endemic myopia that haunts British medical practice.The diagnoses that had shaped the trajectory of Brendan's life, had crumbled into dust, and it was time for him to start a new life. The first port of call? The Accra mechanics college he presently attends - the type he'd never have had access to in the UK, in spite of his natural gift for problem solving. Here, classes are delivered without condescension and cynicism, and here, he is challenged and celebrated in equal parts.
The last few years have seen a dramatic spike in autism diagnoses, with neurodivergence in general, receiving greater attention than ever. On paper, this is a win for those historically cast into the peripheries, but we must consider whether this is a consequence of greater understanding, or a gift to 'Big Pharma'Perhaps a byproduct of this normalisation, autism has also become the axis upon which risqué jokes spin. The stuff of memes, it is casually attached to social quirks and slightly non-normative behaviour. We must consider just how helpful all of this is, given lazy diagnoses has seen many with nuanced needs, locked into systemic loops - a life sentence for those without the facility to escape.
(These images form part of a larger Empyrean project).