June 12, 2020
TOPIC: Featured News, Patients & Members, Patient Stories
Rare Reflections: Jacob’s Story
Posted at June 6, 2020 08:48 am by Laura Mullen
I was diagnosed with toxic acute progressive leukoencephalopathy, a rare brain disease that took me from a high functioning and able-bodied individual to locked in syndrome, in six months. This story began on May 24, 2017 at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester Massachusetts. I went to the emergency department with stroke-like symptoms. Life was never the same.
I was diagnosed with afibrinogenemia when I was just one day old. The day I was born my heel sticks would not stop bleeding, which immediately had the delivering doctor puzzled. I was then rushed to a different hospital, four hours away, where there were specialists that could figure… 
