Looking for Answers

By Gail Sheehy

Nine months after the shock of her young husband's sudden loss of muscle strength in his upper body, Heather Hatlo-Porter still had no clear diagnosis. When I called to ask how she and her husband and year-old son were adjusting to this ongoing uncertainty, her voice was calm and controlled.

"We have to resolve ourselves to the fact there won't be a clear diagnosis," she said. "Brian is in remission and seems to be stabilized, so the doctors are not trying to give us any answers. It's frustrating. But we're trying to adjust to a New Normal."

The couple had tried to mobilize, but the many specialists they consulted could not clearly identify the enemy that had attacked an otherwise robust former athlete at the peak of his young adulthood, age 32. When they demanded answers, the neurologist acknowledged that he could only speculate. It was an autoimmune response to a very traditional mononucleosis-type virus that could have struck any one of us.

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