Page 42 of Woman on the Verge

Merry interrupted: “Can you hear that, Nicole? I have you on speakerphone.”

“Is that Nikki?” I heard my dad ask.

“Yes, Mer, I can hear. Hi, Dad. Go ahead, Doctor. Sorry.”

“We didn’t see any inflammatory cells with the lumbar puncture. No infection. No malignancy. All the biomarkers for autoimmune issues were negative. The paraneoplastic syndrome panel is still pending, but we did a CT scan of his chest and didn’t see any tumors. The blood work is negative for any other issues.”

I wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news. Her tone screamed bad news, but to me it just sounded like they were still uncertain.

Until . . .

“So we did a repeat MRI, and that showed significant changes from the last one that was done.”

She began to explain the changes in what sounded like a different language. I would have asked her to slow down, but it sounded like she was on her way to the important information, a train barreling down a rickety track.

“Considering those changes, along with the EEG showing irritability in the frontal area, and his unsteady gait and subacute cognitive decline, we think it’s a degenerative process called CJD.”

She paused, thinking we must have questions, but I had no idea what she was really saying.

“What do I have?” Dad blurted out.

“It’s one of the extremely rare neurodegenerative conditions I mentioned yesterday. It’s a prion disease.”

I’d heard of prion diseases before.

“Like mad cow disease?” I asked.

“Sort of, but this isn’t something from meat or anything. It just ... happens. Sometimes prion proteins in the brain misfold, similar to how healthy cells turn cancerous. We don’t know why.”

“And it’s definitely this?”

“The confirmatory test of the spinal fluid will take a couple weeks, but we are reasonably certain.”

She paused again.

“Can I drive?” Dad asked.

“I’m sorry, but you really shouldn’t be driving,” the doctor said.

“Wait, what is it called?” I asked.

“I need to be able to drive,” Dad said.

“Rob, hold on,” Merry told him. “We need to get all the information.”

“It’s CJD,” the doctor said, addressing my question. Then she said what CJD stood for, but again, it sounded like a foreign language.

I quickly googled CJD, and as I tapped on the first result, my entire world changed.

CJD.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Human prion disease.

Rapidly progressive.

Invariably fatal.

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