They were in the midst of a Michigan blizzard and he was out trying to clear their driveway when a neighbor stopped to ask how his wife was doing. Although she worked for a medical doctor, a diagnosis had eluded them. “Not good,” was the reply.
They talked a bit about what was going on with her, and later that night the neighbor, a chiropractor, called saying he thought he had identified what she had. “She needs to get somewhere and have a lung biopsy immediately,” he asserted.
She notified her doctor, and because of the extreme winter weather they could not get her to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. They could not get her to University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In the snowy situation she could only be airlifted to Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), formerly known as Wegener’s granulomatosis, is a rare autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation of small- and medium-sized blood vessels (vasculitis). It restricts blood flow and forms inflamed, swollen tissue masses called granulomas, primarily affecting the upper and lower respiratory tracts (sinuses, nose, lungs) and kidneys.
Sure enough, she was diagnosed with GPA! And even more sure enough, they had experienced a divine blizzard because the world’s foremost expert in Wegener’s granulomatosis at that time was at Cleveland Clinic….
