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In a World of 7,000 Rare Diseases Without a Cure, How One Man Miraculously Found a Cure for His Sickness

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Today's medical care is the best it's ever been, but believe it or not, there are still an estimated 7,000 rare diseases that do not have a cure or even a treatment.
 
For this week's Healthy Living program on the CBN News Channel, our health reporter Lorie Johnson sat down with a man who suddenly came down with one of those diseases. Miraculously, he discovered his own cure.

"I started feeling more tired than usual. I started noticing abdominal pain and then fluid accumulating in my legs," David Fajgenbaum recalls. "I just knew something was wrong, I didn't know what, but I knew something really serious."

He went to the emergency room. "They did blood work and told me, 'David, your liver, your kidneys, and your bone marrow are shutting down. We don't know why. We need to hospitalize you right away."

As he faced the terrifying unknown he only became sicker, and 11 weeks later he was in ICU on life-support. Eventually, doctors figured out the type of rare immune system disorder he had. It was essentially a death sentence.

Fajgenbaum says, "Getting the diagnosis, this was just the beginning."

His story eventually took an amazing turn when he figured out that a drug already on the market for a completely different medical condition also helped him with his own.  

You can find out what he did and watch the entire interview Tuesday night on our Healthy Living program at 9:30 Eastern Time on the CBN News Channel. He's also got his story in a new book called Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action; A Memoir.
 

 

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About The Author

Lorie Johnson
Lorie
Johnson

As CBN’s Senior Medical Reporter, Lorie Johnson reports on the latest information about medicine and wellness. Her goal is to provide information that will inspire people to make healthy choices. She joined CBN in 2008 and has interviewed some of the world's leading doctors and researchers from The Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and more. She kept viewers up to date throughout the COVID-19 pandemic with regular appearances onThe 700 Club, Faith Nation, and Newswatch. She has reported on many ground-breaking medical advancements, including the four-part series, Build a