Free Republic

LAST RESORTS Everything literally changed in my life in one brief moment," said Stephen R. Neiley III. "There's nothing anyone can do about it. Nobody knows why." Ten years ago, he was perfectly healthy, with a successful career and a family, when suddenly, for the first time in his life, he had a seizure. It was the beginning of a long and relentless illness, an intractable form of epilepsy that led him to give up his career, contributed to the demise of his marriage and left him, at 51, living on a farm in northwestern Pennsylvania with his parents. Mr....

MINNEAPOLIS - Dr. Mindy Rauch thought she was humoring her brother at a family gathering last Father's Day when she agreed to examine his 6-month-old daughter, Hannah. The baby's stomach worried him: it felt taut, and too big. Dr. Rauch, a pediatrician, thought her brother was just another nervous first-time father. "Oh, look at this belly," she said playfully, feeling the baby's middle. A moment later she turned to her husband, who is also a pediatrician, and said, "You have to feel this." Hannah's liver and spleen were enormously enlarged. It was a sign of serious illness: possibly a tumor,...