January 26, 2017. Something wasn’t right. David wouldn’t wake up. When I finally picked him up in my arms, his eyes opened slowly, but the look he gave me stopped me cold. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me at all. Like I was a stranger. I asked him if he was okay, but he didn’t answer. He wouldn’t speak. My heart dropped. When we got to the emergency room parking lot, David couldn’t walk. Doctors considered everything- cat scratch disease, meningitis, encephalitis. Nothing fit. After a week of trying to control the seizures with no success, David was placed into a medically induced coma and life-flighted to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. It was there he was diagnosed with FIRES (Febrile Infection-Related Epilepsy Syndrome). He spent his 7th birthday in a medically induced coma. Despite six anticonvulsants and a VNS, David’s seizures persist. He’s been diagnosed with major neurocognitive disorder, which essentially means that at 15 years old David is living with dementia caused by FIRES.