The White Urine That Held the Key

A housewife's unusual bathroom trips lead her doctor to diagnose a rare tropical disease.

By Claire Panosian Dunavan
May 22, 2008 5:00 AMNov 12, 2019 5:32 AM

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Sela Miller was perplexed—and so was I. She had just emerged from our clinic rest­room, specimen in hand. But her urine was far from the bright yellow most people produce.

“So this is what it looks like,” she said, staring at the milky sample. “For weeks I thought something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell for sure.” Then Sela, a Polynesian woman with long, dark hair—the wife of a custom car builder and mother of several youngsters—gave a tiny shrug as if to say, Oh, well.

For a moment I remained quiet. Like Sela, I had never seen anything quite like the opalescent urine now sitting in a sterile screw-top jar on my desk.

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