What do all of the illnesses below have in common?
A policeman is flagged down by a 32-year-old woman at a park in Joliet, Illinois who says she can’t remember who she is or how she got there. She is later found to be a mother of four children living in Jackson, Michigan. Her name is Amber. She has not recovered memory of her earlier life or what triggered her amnesia. Doctors are at a loss to know what caused this case of "global amnesia."
Marie is college educated, with a father who is a physician and mother who is a nurse, and she can’t find anyone who can tell her why she is experiencing severe nausea and vomiting early in her first pregnancy. No one seems to know. Folk remedies are sought. Despite being the most common torment of pregnancy, the cause of morning sickness remains a mystery. Or is it?
Jim, a rock sculptor living near Ontario, California, looks like Indiana Jones in the movie Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Prop him up on a bar stool drinking down some brew and he would fit into any beer commercial. He is manly but has an unmanly and embarrassing problem. All of a sudden he can’t seem to control his bowels. He is running to the bathroom all the time. His doctor says it is irritable bowel syndrome, a now common condition that forces sufferers to be closely tethered to bathrooms. A drug is prescribed that slows down gastric transit time but induces sleepiness, and can’t be taken while driving. But what is the cause of his problem?
Jackie is out of work and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and suffering with relentless pain that has been diagnosed as fibromyalgia. Doctors don’t seem to have an answer as to what causes this problem. Inexplicably, a number of people with fibromyalgia report having the same problem as Jim the rock sculptor (above), irritable bowel. Are the two conditions linked in any way? An estimated 5 million Americans have fibromyalgia, some of them children.
Robert, an award-winning journalist, wakes up one morning with a slight weakness in his left leg. Then he begins to lose his ability to speak. He has to say "yes" or "no" by shifting his eyes. Doctors offer an experimental drug. For unexplained reasons, doctors delay treatment until Robert loses feeling throughout his body and is now permanently confined to a wheelchair. Doctors say Robert had a bout of Guillain Barré syndrome that never went into remission as most other cases do. Again, doctors have no idea of the cause of this progressive loss of nervous system control, some believing it is triggered by a virus.
Steve, age 35, had been suffering heart palpitations for years and finally was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a quivering heart muscle in the top chambers of the heart. Surgery and medication began to slowly help Steve regain his energy. Steve wonders if his children will inherit his problem. Despite successful treatment, neither surgery nor medication addresses the still unknown cause of atrial fibrillation. Millions of Americans, mostly men, face this same problem. Treatment consists of prescribing blood thinners to prevent a blood clot in the heart being thrown into the lungs or brain and controlled destruction of the heart muscle (ablation) itself. But what is its cause?
Martin, at age 56, first noticed could not keep up with his 70-year old brother in law when out hunting. He began to experience shortness of breath, fatigue, swelling in his ankles and a persistent cough. The diagnosis: heart failure. The cure: the implantation of a device in his chest that helps his heart pump blood. The device is credited with saving his life. More commonly heart failure is treated with a battery of drugs. But a recent study shows the drugs are of negligible value.


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