This article appeared in the March/April issue of Discover magazine as "Bye-Bye, Brain." Subscribe for more stories like these.
Anne was in the prime of her career — a trial lawyer working as a partner for a major law firm in Cincinnati — when she began to lose her mind. A fitness enthusiast, Anne was only 50 when she realized something was amiss.
“The first thing I noticed was that my hands would begin to shake while I was sitting at my desk,” she recalls. Perplexed, she went to see a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, who referred her for CT and MRI scans; both came back normal. She was given a diagnosis of essential tremor disorder, a progressive but not life-threatening condition.
But within months, new symptoms began to appear: brain fog, memory loss, problems with reading and understanding even the simplest sentences. The work she had excelled at ...
