A baby is born and appears completely fine. Slowly though, complications develop. Her little heart is beating too fast, her breathing is not quite right. As they put her under the heat lights to warm her, she swells and turns black and blue.
The doctors try to save her, but everything they do makes her worse. They soon discover that light itself is her demon. She is allergic to the sun, fluorescent light, even a 100-watt incandescent light bulb.
This is not an episode of "House" or "ER." It is real. In this case, doctors figured out what was wrong, and the baby survived. But she hardly ever gets to be outside, and when she does, she is completely covered head-to-toe. She never gets to see the sun or feel its warmth on her body. It is not the childhood any parent would envision.
It seems everyone in our newsroom has been coming up to me in recent days and telling me stories about their own medical mysteries or those of friends.
I was one of those medical students who firmly believed I had every illness my professors talked about in class. I was the guy in the back of the lecture hall slowly bringing my hand to my head and worrying what malady would strike next.
I slowly got over my hypochondria, but it resurfaced over the past month while working a series of stories about rare medical disorders, including this one about light disorder, which airs tonight. It's enough to make me want to rush home to my seven-month-old daughter to make sure everything is fine.