The Myth of Normal 60

Chapter 5 Mutiny on the Body: The Mystery of the Rebellious Immune System A lot of times I’ve had to pretend I felt good when I felt terrible. —Venus Williams “I kind of injured myself,” Mee Ok[*] told me recently, “because I was doing very well and then I tripped, running up a flight of stairs. So I stubbed my toe.” Her warm, impish humor radiates in the telling, as does a certain sense of pride. For most of us that would be an odd reaction to a painful mishap like that. But to the Mee Ok of seven years ago, such an injury, incurred while moving vigorously against gravity, would have seemed like an impossible dream. Diagnosed at age twenty-seven with scleroderma, she had become completely disabled in a short time despite all that mainstream medicine had to offer. She lives in the Boston area and was assessed and treated at one of Western medical science’s most hallowed venues. From the Greek for “hard skin,” scleroderma is an autoimmune disorder that manifests in debilitating joint inflammation and painful tightening of the connective tissues. A more inclusive name for the condition is systemic sclerosis, as the buildup of hardened tissue can occur in many organs, including the esophagus, blood vessels, and lungs. In Mee Ok’s case, it showed up in agonizing swelling of her hands, shoulders, and knees. “The pain was everywhere,” she recalls. “It flooded my whole body.” She soon had to leave her job at Harvard as an assistant to a prominent academic. Formerly