Daniel MacGowan This is the patient, posting under her husband’s name. I give Dr. Nowacek huge credit. Unmentioned in the story, likely for space reasons, is the fact that I actually saw two other neurologists at Bronson first. They were both completely stumped but thought maybe it was an atypical Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I saw Nowacek a week later by chance — I had run out of pain meds, needed  to see a doc in person to renew the script and he was the doc with an opening in his schedule. He could have just refilled the prescription and figured the other neurologists were on the case. Instead, he did an examination, listened to my story and said, “I think this is something we’re not thinking about yet” and ordered a slew of blood tests. (So many, in fact, that the person at the blood lab said she’d never seen an order so long.) I remember that Nowacek told me that four of the 40-some test results were abnormal, those indicated an autoimmune issue and he made sure that I had an appointment with a rheumatologist ASAP.So should he have guessed it was Churg-Strauss? I had a whole bunch of symptoms, of which asthma was only one. It’s a rare condition. I was the first case that either  Dr. Nowacek and Dr. Kocharla had even seen in person. Rare enough that Kocharla’s fellow rheumatologists at Bronson were initially skeptical of her diagnosis. Rare enough that the Mayo folks were impressed I was diagnosed so quickly; they see EPGA patients who go undiagnosed for years.

Daniel MacGowan This is the patient, posting under her husband’s name. I give Dr. Nowacek huge credit. Unmentioned in the story, likely for space reasons, is the fact that I actually saw two other neurologists at Bronson first. They were both completely stumped but thought maybe it was an atypical Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I saw Nowacek a week later by chance — I had run out of pain meds, needed  to see a doc in person to renew the script and he was the doc with an opening in his schedule. He could have just refilled the prescription and figured the other neurologists were on the case. Instead, he did an examination, listened to my story and said, “I think this is something we’re not thinking about yet” and ordered a slew of blood tests. (So many, in fact, that the person at the blood lab said she’d never seen an order so long.) I remember that Nowacek told me that four of the 40-some test results were abnormal, those indicated an autoimmune issue and he made sure that I had an appointment with a rheumatologist ASAP.So should he have guessed it was Churg-Strauss? I had a whole bunch of symptoms, of which asthma was only one. It’s a rare condition. I was the first case that either  Dr. Nowacek and Dr. Kocharla had even seen in person. Rare enough that Kocharla’s fellow rheumatologists at Bronson were initially skeptical of her diagnosis. Rare enough that the Mayo folks were impressed I was diagnosed so quickly; they see EPGA patients who go undiagnosed for years.

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