David Fajgenbaum was in medical school when his body began shutting down. A former college quarterback, he lay in bed, nearly helpless, as a priest read him his last rites. Then a doctor pitched a Hail Mary pass by administering seven different types of chemotherapy, hoping to blast Castleman disease out of Fajgenbaum’s body. It worked. He returned to medical school and to life.| Susannah Fox
Jill Dopf Viles suspected a killer was hiding in her family’s genetic code. Symptoms popped up among her siblings, her father, her uncle, her grandmother, but, despite 15 annual visits to the Mayo Clinic, no clinician suggested anything more specific than muscular dystrophy.| Susannah Fox
Alex Durussel-Baker was on a plane taxiing down a runway when she found out she had Type 1 diabetes. She had been increasingly tired and had lost a lot of weight without meaning to, so had gone to a clinic where she lives in Edinburgh to get checked out. The nurse was reassuring – even […]| Susannah Fox
Imagine the nerves behind one of your eyes suddenly bursting into flames of pain, relentlessly burning for hours. The pain recedes, then roars back, day after day. You try to describe what is happening inside your head to your family, your clinicians, even yourself, but words fall short. It is the worst pain a human can endure.| Susannah Fox
Jean Nidetch and six friends decided to try to lose weight together, meeting at her home to encourage and support each other in their quest. Their success drew more friends and in May, 1963, Nidetch launched a company based on the idea that peer support is key to weight control. Over 400 people showed up to the first official meeting in Queens, New York.| Susannah Fox
This post is the latest in my series of “Wow! How? Health” stories, also shared on LinkedIn if you want to follow the conversation on that platform. It starts with a story that long-time readers of this blog will hopefully recognize! Ten years ago this week my friend Delina texted me: I am sweeping the kitchen and just found […]| Susannah Fox
Further experiments with constraint-based layout systems for GTK+| halting problem