One week after turning 52, Tom Scocca fell while trying to catch a train at a New York City subway station, his legs having simply given out, he explains in an essay at New York. Soon he was experiencing a number of mysterious symptoms: tingling and numbness in his extremities, swollen hands and feet, finger stiffness, chest tightness, shortness of breath. He went to his doctor and got no answers; he went to a bevy of specialists and the lack of answers continued. Test after test came back normal (with the exception of his blood testing positive for general inflammation), but his symptoms continued worsening or, in some cases, changing: The swelling improved, for example, but his ability to exert himself decreased to the point that he could barely carry a bag of rice home from the market. A nurse discovered his pulse-oximeter reading was low, but still no answers followed.
He got COVID after avoiding it for three years, after which new symptoms emerged and existing symptoms got worse. He spent more time in bed, precipitously dropped weight, stopped leaving home. Finally, after a test found his body's level of creatine kinase (a marker of muscle breakdown) was off the charts, he went to the hospital. The mystery persisted, however, and while new things were discovered (a hernia, a larger-than-normal liver) none of them seemed to offer a firm diagnosis. After thyroid issues were uncovered and a muscle biopsy was carried out, Scocca was treated with steroids and was able to leave the hospital, his symptoms abating just the smallest bit. But as of the time he wrote the essay, he still didn't have answers beyond some sort of autoimmune condition. "I despise those stories where a writer tells you all about some mystery for thousands of words and then fails to deliver the solution," he writes, but "medicine hasn't really solved for the body attacking itself." Read his full story here. (Or read more longform recaps.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
