Prologue
One day in 2001 when Kota was 6 years old, he suddenly said “I have no power in my left hand”. Since he broke his bone of the left wrist some time ago when he fell down from a gym to the ground, my wife and I thought it was something like a hangover of that incident. The symptom was gone after several minutes. After a while, he then had no power in his right hand. It also disappeared after several minutes. Obviously it was not because of any injury/fracture. We thought then what? But we did not think it would be so serious.
Kota has been playing soccer since he was 4 years old. So he continues to play soccer in a league of Sunnyvale after coming to the US. Not to say, the field is getting bigger and bigger as kids grow and they have to run longer distance. Meanwhile, Kota became getting tired easily. What’s more, he sometimes lost power not only in hands, but also in legs after running a lot. But we, parents, were just wondering “what was going on?” and took no action.
It was Christmas season in 2003 when Kota was 8 years old, we went to Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. After riding a hard shaking attraction in California Adventure, he became faint and could not walk. He had to sit down on a bench for a while. Again, the parents thought something might be wrong, but did not take any action because he got recovered after several minutes. Since then he had weakness/numbness in hand or leg several times.
In September, 2004 when he was 9 years old, Kota said he collapsed in recess at school because he had numbness-like symptom on his leg. On October 10th, when Kota was participating a baseball practice, during fielding after batting, he suddenly collapsed onto the grass. This time, I was watching him. He stood up, but so faint and fell down again. His consciousness was OK, but no control on his one leg made him a little panic. Having seen this, I thought it must be something wrong. I started internet search using some keywords, such as numbness in legs. Then I came across some websites regarding Moyamoya, most of which were in Japanese. I thought Kota’s symptoms were very similar to typical ones of this disease. The doubt that Kota might have Moyamoya could not be ignored. We consulted with Kota’s primary pediatrician. The doctor said “it is not sure but he should visit a neurologist”, and he gave referrals to three pediatric neurologists, which was very good advise.
I made phone calls to make an appointment on October 12th, 2004, but the first two doctors were so busy that the appointment would be on 28th or 29th. No matter how urgent I insisted it was, it did not change. The third doctor said the next day would be available, so I jumped on this. Consequently, I believe we came across a very good doctor.
On October 13th, we went to see the doctor. After I explained what happened so far, the doctor told us that it should be due to mental or emotional problems. However, since we suspected Moyamoya, I asked the possibility of the disease. Moreover, since this disease could be diagnosed by MRI, we asked for MRI examination. The doctor's first response was it would not be the case because Moyamoya is an extremely rare disease. But he said if we thought so, and it cannot be ruled out completely, why not take MRI just in case. The doctor kindly negotiated with the insurance company to authorize the exam. Then we could make an appointment on October 28th.