re: Friend's kid was diagnosed with atypical Rett's syndrome. Damn.

NBC News just ran a story on Rett's Syndrome last week. Richard Engel, their chief foreign correspondent, has a son with the disorder.

LINK

quote:

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Engel and his wife, Mary Forrest, knew early on that something wasn't right with their son, Henry. Even as the boy approached the second year of his life, he couldn’t talk or clap his hands. He also couldn't walk or even sit up straight. The boy’s parents took him to every doctor they could think of.

“It was a mystery and we thought, ‘Okay, well there are late bloomers,’” Engel remembered thinking.

Then the results of the full set of genetic tests came back last September, just around his second birthday, revealing Henry had a genetic brain disorder, a variation of Rett syndrome. The condition is caused by a rare genetic mutation that almost exclusively affects girls. It currently does not have a treatment or cure.

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