This text comes from the stern archive and first appeared online in September 2020. On the occasion of Rare Disease Day on February 29th, we are publishing it again.
I didn’t get to know the patient personally at first. But I soon knew his medical history pretty well: The gardener had come to the Center for Unrecognized and Rare Diseases at the Marburg University Hospital because he had been having various symptoms for a long time and no doctor could find the cause. The first complaints began five years earlier. Suddenly the tall, athletic man felt bad, and new symptoms arose: dizziness, weakness, rash, bloody diarrhea, inflammation in the lymph nodes, salivary glands, jaw and intestines. Sometimes the 40-year-old suddenly collapsed. He gradually lost 48 kilos of weight.
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