Over Memorial Day weekend 2023, 12-year-old Lia Brophy was standing in line for merchandise at a Taylor Swift concert. The sun was beating down and she began to feel dizzy. Her mother, Nancy, encouraged Lia to sit down and drink water, but it didn’t help. Lia’s vision was soon obscured by black dots and she heard a ringing in her ears. She thought she was going to faint, but she never lost consciousness. The headache pain was debilitating.
After the concert, these episodes continued whenever Lia was out in the hot sun. She had symptoms while at a tennis tournament with her family and during outdoor activities in gym class. She couldn’t even stand outside during recess at school without feeling dizzy.
Lia was perplexed. “I’m a healthy girl in middle school,” she told her mother. “I should be able to run the mile in gym class.”
Nancy took Lia to her pediatrician, who suggested doing bloodwork to see if Lia was anemic or had any other anomalies. All of the tests came back normal, so the pediatrician advised Nancy to take Lia to see a cardiologist and a neurologist. The cardiologist thought the dizziness may be from a heart issue and ordered an electrocardiogram and an echocardiogram to check. Once again, results were normal. Lia began to wear a heart monitor patch so the doctor could see if there were any irregularities occurring over a longer period of time.
After a year of taking Lia to various doctors, Nancy brought her to neurologist Dr. James Charles at Holy Name. The Brophy family already knew and trusted Dr. Charles, who had treated other family members dealing with neurological issues in the past.
One of Dr. Charles’s specialties is in headache medicine, and he told Nancy that the heart monitor Lia was wearing wasn’t going to show anything abnormal. Lia’s symptoms, along with her history of car sickness as a baby and her family history of migraines, led him to diagnose her with migraines with brainstem auras, which means her symptoms start from her brainstem or both sides of the brain at the same time. Dr. Charles prescribed a migraine medication for Lia to take daily, and the results were practically instantaneous. Just one day after her diagnosis and starting the medication, Lia was able to participate in gym class without experiencing any symptoms. Two days later, she sang at an event in the hot sun without an issue.
Nancy appreciated that Dr. Charles took the time to ask questions about Lia’s health history, and that he brought her medical articles about migraines so she could learn more about what her daughter was experiencing.
Lia, now 13, participates in gym class, recess, and any other activities on a hot day without worrying about her migraines.
“When Dr. Charles walked in with that diagnosis, I was so relieved. I had seen so many doctors in the past year, and no one had been able to diagnose me or cure me,” she said.
Nancy, too, was relieved. “It was life-changing,” she said.
