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The parents of an apparently happy baby who "laughed" 17 hours a day were shocked to discover that he actually had a rare brain tumor.
When little Jack Young, a native of North Somerset in the UK, started giggling two weeks after his birth, parents Gemma and Ed just thought he was an exceptionally happy baby.
But it turned out that the incessant laughter was actually a crisis of "laughter" caused by a hypothalamic hamartoma, a benign tumor of the brain.
"There was no respite, the dull laugh was constant and for a long time we did not know why," said his mother, Gemma, 32.
After two years of shrapnel, which began from dawn to dusk, Jack had 10 hours to suppress growth.
And just like that, the strange crises have stopped.
Doctors have explained how rare seizures of gelatin epilepsy normally occur in one out of 1,000 epileptic children and involve sudden flushes of energy, usually in the form of tears or laughter.
After Jack's birth in May 2014, he began to laugh even in his sleep, with explosions from 30 minutes to 17 hours without interruption.
"To be honest, we only thought that he was so happy all the time," Gemma said.
"It was a small laugh but it seemed to go again and again, like a record in rehearsal.
"At first I was just a new mom who was trying to start a new routine, but after two months things were getting too difficult and we had to move Jack downstairs to sleep at the end because he was also holding his brother awake, exhausting. "
It was only at Jack's six-week check-up that a health visitor told Gemma that she was worried about the sound of Jack giggling.
"I felt horrible that another woman noticed it in my baby and, as a mother, I should have reported it," Gemma continued.
She immediately took Jack to see the general practitioner and directed him to a specialist ear, nose and throat.
"At that time, none of us slept at all and I begged the doctors to do something," Gemma said.
"The sound was unrelenting and so unpredictable, it was hard to fall asleep, because I did not know when the noise was going to happen again."
But even the specialist did not really know what was going on – and so referred the family to a neurologist at the Royal Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol.
"Even a hospital nurse thought that he was laughing and was shocked when she realized that her" laughter "was the reason we were consulting doctors," Gemma said.
"People would say to us, 'Is not he a happy boy?' "And it was a very happy little boy, but his laugh was not a laugh, it was something else, I did not know what could be wrong with Jack, but I was terrified of it. idea that it never stops. "
Finally, after Jack had an MRI, his family was diagnosed.
"The doctor said that he had a hypothalamic hamartoma, which means that he had a benign brain tumor the size of a grape at the base of his brain, which caused gel-like seizures (gelastic meaning "laughter" in Greek).
"It was a huge relief to know what was wrong with him, but so ripping at the same time to think that he had gone through all of this.
"All of his other areas of development were so amazing, like his speech and understanding, but he was laughing all the time," Gemma said.
"It did not stop him from eating solid foods at six weeks or walking a year. In fact, strangely, he could walk and laugh at the same time.
"He spent his day as usual, but laughter too."
Since the operation, Jack, who is now four years old, has not had a single fit of laughter.
Although his parents admit that they can still be nervous when he laughs naturally – as he often does when joking on TV – they are so grateful that he can lead a normal life.
"The day after the operation, we realized that Jack had not laughed once, which was a strange feeling." We were sitting waiting for him to do it, but he did not. But when we heard it laughing properly for the first time it was incredible. "
Gemma added, "He's such a happy little boy and a real success.
"It's a boy so cheeky, with a great sense of humor, who comes out with liners that make us all laugh.
"The hypothalamic hamartoma is so rare and I want parents to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that things are getting better." This operation changed Jack's life and ours, and we are very grateful. "
This article originally appeared in The Sun and has been republished here with permission.
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