Diagnosis (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Wisdom of the Crowd - full transcript

[man] You see one of the cerebral arteries
coming up.

[Lisa] You see how it's narrow,

like it's almost pinched off?

[Lisa] When we think about who we are,

we think about our brain.

It's our memories.

Those are the things
that really define us.

But what happens
when our brain starts to shut down

and those memories begin to disappear?

Who are we then?

I recently heard about a case
of a guy who was losing his memory



and, really, losing his mind,

and some of the world's top neurologists
haven't been able to understand why.

He needs answers before it's too late,

and I want the crowd to help.

[woman] Did you take your pill?

Dad? You take your pills?

-Take your pills?
-Yeah.

-[woman] What time did you take them?
-[man] I think...

Okay,
'cause then you're ready for breakfast.

[man] Today's Saturday, right?

[woman] Yes. All day.

[man] It's very hard.

I used to be a fun guy, and now,

since I'm losing my memory,
I'm a totally different person,



and the doctors can't tell me nothing...

...about what's going on with me.

[woman] Had you gone
to go check over there, Willie,

to get the measurements
for the chicken coop?

Cómo, babe?

[woman] Had you gone outside

to kind of measure over here
where we want to do the chicken coop?

[girl] I don't think he has.

[woman] It all started two years ago.

Willie had gotten up
to get ready for work

and all of a sudden,
I hear the loudest thunk,

and when I opened the door,
he was falling over,

having a seizure,

and he was still seizing up
until the ambulance got there.

Look, it's good.

Since then,

there's been a big change in him.

[Willie] When I meet somebody,
they ask me what's going on.

I just tell them
I've got lesions on my brain.

I had two seizures.

They're messing up my memory.

I'm losing my hearing.

I go through a lot of mood swings.

I get real emotional. Um...

Frustrated.

[Sandra] I met Willie the summer of '89.

It was the quinceañera, actually,
that my brother was in.

So we've been married 24 years now.

-Is this on camera?
-[woman] I don't care.

[woman laughing]

Babe?

[Sandra] The old Willie
was not as emotional as he is now.

[indistinct conversation]

That's for you, babe. Love you.

[Sandra] Anything now can set him off.

His confidence
has kind of diminished a little bit.

He still has a sense of humor.

And you didn't get your hair cut.
Look at that little 'fro coming up.

[Sandra chuckles]

Or are you just ignoring us now?

Are you... [laughing]

He's turning off his hearing aid.

[laughing]

He's still the same caring, loving person.

Just the memory loss is the big thing.

[indistinct conversation and laughter]

[Willie] These are pictures
that were taken in basic.

This is in Missouri.

I was 18 at the time.

I was in a lot of places.

Germany, Korea,

Saudi Arabia.

I was a tank mechanic, which I loved.

These were the barracks
that we used to live in

in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

I made a lot of friends with people
from all over the States.

We had a lot of good times.

I remember some of them.

I wish I could remember more, though.

The one he showed you when he was in red

-was actually when he was in Korea.
-Where?

Korea.

See, these were the ones. See?

-Oh, yeah.
-Where we...

[Sandra] Yeah.

[indistinct conversation]

[Willie]
I forget a lot, or I repeat myself a lot.

Well, we joke about it,

but, like, when my friends do,

I think it makes me feel
like maybe a child.

My military career,

I served eight years.

Got out of the service.

I got a job in a prison
taking care of inmates.

I was working there 19 years,

and I got let go

'cause I couldn't do my job duties.

Come on.

Now that I don't have a job,

I wake up in the morning,

cook breakfast for my daughter,

feed my pigs and my goat, chicken.

Really, that's it.

Around here,

we really don't have a lot of friends.

My memory loss,

I think it's progressing.

I'd say that it's 70%, maybe.

In the future, I'm afraid I'll wake up
and have no memory of my family.

[speaking Spanish]

[girl] Whenever I go to school,
I'm always wondering, like,

"Is he gonna have another seizure?"

I'm just really scared
because I don't want it to happen again.

Lately,
he's been forgetting a little bit more,

especially about big things,

and I think with my quinceañera coming up,
he's also worried about that

because it's a Mexican tradition
of a young girl going into womanhood,

and I think he feels that,
with forgetting about my quinceañera,

he's gonna hurt me.

[Sandra] Are you finding this hard?

[Serena] Sometimes I wish that things
can go back to the way they were

'cause this isn't my dad.

[tearfully] This isn't him.

He knows it's not him.

[Lisa] Clearly,

Willie has something that's strange.

He's losing years at a time.

He asked his wife to describe
the birth of their daughter...

because he forgot.

Willie's MRI is really one of
the scariest pictures I've ever seen.

He has this big lesion
at the base of his brain,

and coming from that are these tendrils
of white mist, like fingers.

Those fingers represent a kind of
inflammation and destruction.

When you have inflammation in the brain,

cells can't communicate.

Everything stops.

And so I think that his loss of memory
and his loss of control over his emotions

come from the fact
that this creeping invasion

of whatever this white stuff is
has hit that part of his brain.

It leaves him just powerless.

[Sandra] Willie has had two spinal taps,

lab work, MRIs.

Then we thought,
"Okay, could it be Alzheimer's?

Could it be cancer?"

And nothing was coming up.

So the last resort was the biopsy,

and that was in June and came back...

unspecified.

So what is it?

Willie's condition
has been hard to diagnose

because, in a very real sense,

it looks like
lots of different possibilities.

Their leading diagnosis
was something called Clippers,

which is a kind of inflammation
that spreads throughout the brain

and is responsive to steroids,

and they gave him steroids -
lots and lots of steroids -

and it did nothing.

Willie's case is still a mystery,

but he is determined to get a diagnosis.

[Willie] We've been here...

I want to say eight times?

-Or more?
-This'll be our 12th trip.

-Huh?
-Our 12th trip here to the Mayo.

This is our 12th one.

-Are you still nervous?
-Huh?

Are you still nervous? Yeah.

Having these medical bills

without Willie having a job,
you know, it's kind of hard.

That's just the camera

-going over the top of you, okay?
-Okay.

Everything that we see,
you can see on the TV if you want to.

-Okay.
-Okay?

[Willie] I was
a year and a couple of months to retire.

I put in for...

early retirement, um, but it got denied.

You're gonna stay that way
for just about 15, 20 minutes, okay?

[Willie]
I put in for disability retirement,

and that got denied.

[woman] Without being able to work now,

is it a financial struggle
to pay for your health insurance?

I don't have any. [laughs]

-[sighs]
-You mean you don't have healthcare?

No.

[Sandra] We have accrued $10,000 in debt.

You know, we've had to put up the title
to our mobile home,

just to kind of help us stay afloat
for a little bit longer.

[woman] Just a little bit more.

[Serena] I'm always thinking,
"Does my mom have enough money

to get us a little bit more food?"

'Cause now we're just living off
the money my mom makes,

and it's not really a lot.

[Sandra] Willie, at one point, said,

"Why don't you just leave me?

You and Serena would be better off
without having to deal with this."

And I kind of had to tell him,
"Really? Is that what you want?"

Yeah, there's times I have my days.
I walk out...

and cry when I have to cry.

But we don't give up.

We don't give up on each other.
We're gonna pull through as a family.

[woman] How did everything go?

-[Sandra] Good.
-[woman] Good.

We can see on the results that you have

that there is chronic inflammation.

We just don't know what's driving
that chronic inflammation.

In terms of your mood, I mean, I certainly
can appreciate that there are times

where there are these, you know, kind of
uncontrolled emotions that come out,

but, I mean,
do you think that your mood is low

-and depressed?
-My what?

That your mood is low and depressed
and that, you know, you don't feel like...

-doing things?
-No. No, I don't...

I really don't know.

[woman] In neurology,
we often do encounter mystery cases...

that are hard to solve.
I think that's in part

because the brain
still remains that final frontier

in terms of not fully understanding
what drives things.

[Sandra] It would have to take a lot of...

[Dr. Grill] You know,
there aren't many cases like Willie's.

[Sandra] ...get seen,
and then you could go private.

[video call ringtone]

[Lisa] Sandra, Willie,

and is that your daughter?

-Yes, this is Serena.
-Hi!

Nice to meet you, Serena.

-Nice to meet you.
-Okay.

So the first thing you remember
happened in January,

and you described it
as feeling sort of out of it,

like you were in The Matrix,
or that's what it says in your records.

It felt like maybe I was dizzy,

and everything kind of slowed down.

I don't know. It's hard to explain.

What I would notice when he would drive,

he would tend to veer off the road, and--

Oh, my God!

And I'd be like,
"That is not normal, Willie.

Like, something is going on."

What do you hope for as an outcome here?

[tearfully] I just want them to,

like, tell me what it is.

Find a cure.

[Lisa] "The early morning quiet

was interrupted
by the sound of a large object falling.

'Willie?' the middle aged woman called out
to her husband,

who moments earlier
disappeared into the bathroom

for his daily prework shower.

Hearing no answer, she opened the door.

Her 43-year-old husband
was lying on the floor.

There was blood all over his face
and on the floor around his head.

Her husband of 16 years
was having a seizure."

I personally, as a doctor,
feel overwhelmed...

by his illness.

When I looked through his data,

I was like, "I have no idea."

And of course I worry that with Willie,
even if he gets a diagnosis,

it might not be in time to help him.

His losses have been
so incredibly profound.

It's hard to imagine
getting all of it back.

Reaching out to the crowd,
to the wisdom of everybody,

I think is his last chance
of getting an answer.

If no one knows,

then maybe no one can know.

My name's Willie Reyes.

I'm suffering from two lesions
on my brain.

It's causing memory loss...

...about this case was
how unusually devastating

his clinical presentation was.

I believe that I saw a link to it
in Facebook.

I study medicine in Denmark.

It sounded similar
to a patient that I'd had...

I actually came across the article
about Willie just on Twitter.

Right away, it connected with my story
and my father's story.

[woman] My diagnosis is that he might have
a fungal infection:

valley fever or cocci in his brain.

[woman 2] I was definitely interested
in Willie's story

because it was very poignant.

My father died at a relatively young age

from a rare brain disease.

My dad is diagnosed with PPND,

which is pallido-ponto-nigral
degeneration, I believe.

The last nine months of his life,
he didn't really move at all.

He may suffer from
paraneoplastic syndrome

caused by an underlying cancer.

I was diagnosed with a condition
called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

It's an autoimmune disease.

[man] So one of the things I thought about

is the disease has a very long name,
which is abbreviated as PML

or progressive multifocal
leukoencephalopathy.

Leukoencephalopathy with brain stem
and spinal cord involvement,

plus or minus elevated lactates.

This is a white matter disease.

There are two sort of difficult diagnoses
that remain.

One is neuro-Behçet's disease

and the other one is
intravascular lymphoma.

Something called neuro-Behçet's disease.

That is very, very rare.
Again, I've had one case of this.

I believe it comes from pork,
specifically uncooked pork.

[woman] I wondered if he had, like,

Gulf War syndrome
because that's another big one.

I mean, the fact that he was in Iraq.

But, I mean,
my thought was if he had that,

maybe they would have
already checked that.

My advice to Willie and his family
is to keep pushing, even though...

I am so sorry for Willie and your family
and what it's going through...

I really hope for him
that they find a diagnosis soon.

Having a network of people
who can talk about the disease with you

and who really understand
what you're going through,

that can be so crucial.

[Lisa] I think it would be hard
for anybody without medical training

to really go through
these hundreds of suggestions.

I really need to help
guide Willie through this process.

After looking through
so many of the suggestions,

I found two interesting possibilities.

One is caused by a virus,

and the other is an autoimmune disorder.

The first one I want
to investigate is PML,

progressive multifocal
leukoencephalopathy.

It's caused by a virus
that can destroy the brain's ability

to transmit even the simplest information.

[video call ringtone]

-[Dr. Swaminathan] Hello?
-Hi.

Dr. Swaminathan.

So you read the story.

-Yes.
-Tell me what your thoughts were.

Some of the things
that I think his wife was describing

reminded me of some patients
that I've seen who had PML.

It tends not to get better,

and it affects the white matter
or the deeper structure in the brain.

Was there anything in his presentation
that reminded you of that?

The sort of loss of oneself,

that he didn't feel, you know,

like he had his normal control
over his emotions

-can accompany PML.
-Right.

But PML is this disease
that we really don't see

except in people whose immune systems
are severely compromised and weakened.

-Right.
-And that's easy to rule out.

Willie does have many
of the symptoms of PML,

but his immune system is just too strong
to let him have a disease like this.

Another interesting diagnosis
from the crowd

is this really rare autoimmune disease:
neuro-Behçet's.

It causes inflammation

and ulceration all over the body.

In Willie's case, they think
it's actually happening in his brain.

[Dr. Korenberg]
My number one would be neuro-Behçet's.

So neuro-Behçet's is a disease
that's more common in Turkey, most of all,

but it can give you this persistent
inflammatory process in multiple MRIs,

despite steroids.

What should be...

Willie's next steps?

Would you use chemotherapy
harder than steroids?

And that's a tough call because,
of course,

if you haven't conclusively
ruled out infection,

you could have just...

Essentially, it's a death sentence,
potentially.

[Sandra] Did you just lose
your little balance there?

[Lisa] Immune-suppressing chemotherapies
to treat Willie's problem,

I think it's an interesting idea,

but I worry that
the possibility of a benefit is too small

to take the risk
that he's talking about taking...

because if he has an infectious disease

and no immune system, he's toast.

He'll die.

In addition,

Behçet's is extremely sensitive
to steroids.

Willie got a lot of steroids

and showed no improvement whatsoever.

[speaking Spanish]

[Dr. Swaminathan] If you've gone to Mayo
and a couple of places,

they've pretty much gone through 99.9%

of anything
that any other doctor's going to think of.

So it's either something
that nobody really knows about,

or it's something
where everybody has an anchoring bias

and hasn't thought about.

You know,
usually when I write these cases,

I have my own secret diagnosis in mind.

I had nothing for Willie.

I mean, I got nothing, you know?

[both laughing]

Yeah.

[Lisa]
We've gotten so many great suggestions,

and yet...

none of them really quite fit.

I noticed that there was
one interesting suggestion

that's come up a number of times
from the people in the crowd:

Gulf War illness,
but I'm not sure about that one, either.

[man] I'm a Desert Storm veteran.

Some of the problems I have ongoing,
like...

a lot of memory issues,

some people think may be related

to whatever I was exposed to
in the Gulf in '91.

And the most unusual aspect

of his history
is he served in the Gulf War.

I served in the Gulf War,

and I have similar problems

with neurological problems
and stuff like that.

I'm not the same person I used to be.

It's all right.

-Okay, I'm--
-It's all right. [laughs]

He gets a little confused, and he can't--

-Get about.
-Yeah.

[Lisa] I also heard from Dr. Kim Sullivan

who is an environmental scientist

who is really the leading expert
in this country

about Gulf War illness.

-[woman] Hello?
-Hi, Kimberly. It's Lisa Sanders.

Tell me about Gulf War syndrome.

I think that Willie has
a lot of the symptoms

that we see in other veterans
with Gulf War illness.

He has brain inflammation

that we think
is at the root of Gulf War illness.

However,

I think that Willie's symptoms are
a little more severe than we tend to see.

Before looking into it for Willie,

I really hadn't thought about it
for five or six years.

It seemed like it was sort of pooh-poohed
by so many doctors.

When was this an accepted diagnosis?

There is ongoing debate.

However, it is established as a disorder.

The cause of that still remains of debate,

whether that's specifically related to
the neurotoxicants they were exposed to.

How common is Gulf War illness
among those veterans?

So Gulf War illness affects
a third of Gulf War veterans.

-A third? That's--
-Yes.

That's a lot.

-Wow.
-It's about 250,000 sick veterans.

It's a lot. It's a lot.

[Dr. Sullivan]
After the war had ended in March of '91,

there were many, many bunkers underground

that the Iraqis had of rockets

that the US Army detonated.

Unfortunately, those weapons were treated
with sarin in the heads of them.

That exposed
about 100,000 Gulf War veterans

to low-dose sarin and cyclosarin.

What we're seeing is our Gulf War veterans

do have changes on brain imaging,
like Willie does.

They have inflammation in the brain,
like Willie does.

They have changes
in the white matter of the brain.

[Willie] Some of these tests
that they already ran on me,

would they catch
some of this Gulf War illness?

That's a great question, Willie.
They would not have necessarily said,

by looking at the scan,
"Oh, that's a Gulf War-related illness,"

'cause it could be other things.
So what we're doing right now,

myself and the other researchers out there
are trying to say,

"Do we have a marker in your brain imaging
or in your blood and your brain imaging

that we can say,
'That's Gulf War illness.' "

[Sandra] Is there a treatment
for the Gulf War illness?

I know what has gone may not come back,
but...

could one day he wake up
and totally not remember us?

Those are some very important questions.

Now, we don't have treatments
that are effective right now

that are available,
but we're hoping in the coming...

probably in the coming couple of years,
we will have some,

and we're hopeful that they will help
with some of the cognitive problems also.

[gunfire]

[Sandra] Wow.

[Willie] The more I hear about this,
the more it makes me think.

It makes you wonder.

Do you think it's that?

We can look into it.

It's like you rewind

-and you want to kick yourself.
-Yeah.

My thing is we did two brain biopsies.

Two freakin' brain biopsies.

And not once did we think of Gulf War.

And I hate it
because now it's, like, damn.

Not once. Not once...

did it cross our mind.

-It closed our eyes.
-Yeah.

-You know what I mean?
-Well, actually it never opened them.

[Willie] Through my military career,
the only thing I can remember

is we could actually see
the oil fields burning behind us.

The sky was kind of black.

It was real polluted.

We could smell that burning oil smell
for miles away.

A lot of that oil smoke
did go into my lungs,

or into everybody's lungs that were there.

Right now I'm thinking some of that...

could be tied into my...

sickness. [sobs]

[Sandra] I was blindsided
with the Gulf War illness

'cause we never went that route.

Would it be best to look into...
towards the Gulf War illness?

We know if this was
something straightforward,

we'd already have a diagnosis,

so in terms of Gulf War illness,

again it's not clear to me
that there's any association with that

because there isn't
a specific diagnostic test for that.

From my standpoint, something autoimmune
has been the highest consideration

from a genetic standpoint.

I think it's probably worth, you know,

seeing about doing some additional testing
for that also.

[Lisa] There is the medicine
that you read in books,

and then there's the medicine
that comes through experience.

Maybe an explanation
for why his condition has eluded

so many really smart doctors
is because it happens

in this population that gets their care

primarily from hospitals
run by the United States Government,

the Department of Veterans Affairs,
or VA hospitals.

Really, doctors outside of that
really haven't seen it.

I think that in order to understand
whether Willie has Gulf War illness,

we need to know exactly where he was

and what he might have been exposed to.

The fact that a third...

a third of all the veterans who were there

have these symptoms is really compelling.

[Willie] I haven't thought of the Gulf War
in a while.

That's mine.

I didn't even think that if I got sick,
they noted it down in my medical records.

-[Sandra] "See opposite."
-These are the records that they gave me

-when I got out, right?
-Right.

[Willie]
So it has to be written down somewhere.

[Sandra] If anything, it would be here.

November '90.

This is when you were first going in.

Vaccine, immunoglobulin... No.

That was in '93.

It was when you were in Fort Bliss.

These look like a dose of something.

-[Willie] Mm-hmm.
-[Sandra] Look.

It's blank.

-Yeah?
-Yeah, look. See?

Some of these don't make sense.

It's all mixed up.

[Sandra] And then, look, that has nothing.

That has nothing.

I can't believe that they just...

basically got us out with no information,
you know what I mean?

I would like to try to remember more

about when I was in the Gulf War.

Sometimes I think

they exposed us to a lot more
than they actually are saying.

Um... The benefits could help me out,
maybe.

After you came out of the military,

you could have gone to the VA,
but you said, "I don't need it.

Give it to somebody who does."

[Willie] Something I never did

is go through the VA
to try to get my benefits.

But having other veterans tell me

that the VA does deny a lot of benefits
and stuff that we're entitled to, um...

It gets me angry 'cause...

we served our time.

Looking back at it, it's like
they basically used people and then...

just throw 'em out.

[Sandra] July 1990.

You know, you do need to at least
get the benefits from the VA

or try to get something to help us out.

I don't know.

[Sandra] We've gotta do it.
We've gotta do it now.

[Lisa] Since we can't tie Willie's illness
to his military record,

he still has a long way to go
to get a diagnosis.

What might help Willie is speaking
with some of the people from the crowd

who've had similar experiences.

Many, many Gulf War veterans
reached out to Willie

because they recognized
what had happened to him

was also what had happened to them,

and they wanted to let him know
he wasn't alone.

I started feeling
like I was in kind of a haze, you know,

almost like you were on some kind of drug,
which I wasn't,

and things progressed.

They got progressively worse
after I retired.

Very bizarre neurological symptoms.

And you have veterans
that are told they're lying

and, you know,
they're imagining these symptoms.

That's why a lot of them
are taking their lives.

All this stuff they tell you
and they teach you in the military,

"Never leave a man behind."

It means something to me.
I spent 20 years living that,

but, sadly, here's what happens.

A lot of times, a veteran gets a letter
from the VA that says,

"You've been denied," and they give up.

Three words: Don't give up.

Don't give up.

He made a lot of good points.

-[Sandra] See? Don't give up.
-Yeah.

[Sandra] You don't hear it just from me.

-I'd love to meet somebody like that.
-Would you be willing to go to Texas?

I don't know. [laughs]

And meet?

We need to go meet somebody,
not only to talk to you,

but to kind of give us the pointers

of how to go about with the VA.

If it helps us out, why not?
I'd be willing to do anything.

[Sandra]
We're hoping to finally meet somebody

that's able to relate to Willie
of just how to manage day-to-day life

and not to feel like he's the only one
out there going through this.

And I think...

Are you okay?

Yeah.

[Willie laughs]

[Willie sniffs]

[doorbell chimes]

-[Willie] Hello.
-[David] Hey, you must be Willie.

Yeah, I'm Willie Reyes.

[David] Nice to meet you. Come on in.

[Sandra] Oh, wow.

-[David] There's my Desert Storm pictures.
-[Willie] Oh!

[Willie] Is this you?

[David] That's me. Tall and skinny.
-[Willie] Yeah. [laughs]

[David] Remember President Bush came over?

-[Willie] Yes.
-[David] And Secretary Cheney.

They're in the pictures there.

Steve Martin.

Bob Dole.

[Willie]
I saw that in the video, the knife.

[man] That's a Marine Corps Ka-Bar.

You want to pick that up
and take a look at it?

That's a traditional
Marine Corps fighting knife.

It's Operation Desert Storm.
My marines gave that to me when I retired.

-That's real nice.
-It's pretty cool.

-[David] You were in the army?
-Yeah.

-[David] How long did you stay in?
-I stayed eight years.

-[David] Okay.
-Eight years.

[David] I was with 1st Marine Division.

We went through the center of Kuwait

all the way up to Kuwait City,
Kuwait International Airport.

[David] So where were you when the war...
the shooting stopped?

-Well, we ended up in Kuwait City.
-Uh-huh.

Well, I might have went right by you
at some point.

[Willie] Probably.

[David] Do you remember
any of the exposures over there?

What do you think you were exposed...
Did you hear any alarms go off?

Yeah, they would want us
to button up inside our vehicles

and just sit there, and then they would
come back and say, "Oh, it's all clear."

So we'd come out,
and we'd start convoying again.

Oh, they would tell us,

"Oh, don't worry about it.
It's a faulty reading," or something.

That's exactly what they told us,

and then we found out years later
that it wasn't false alarms at all.

Unbeknownst to us, we're breathing
small doses of sarin gas,

and it basically covered every place
where you and I were at,

and so even after the war was "over,"
we're breathing this stuff,

and what else we breathe was what?

Smoke from the oil well fires.

When did you start noticing issues?

Like, I noticed a big change
after a seizure.

-I had a seizure in February of 2016.
-Yeah.

-That was my big one.
-Yeah.

This is something with most people
that comes up over a period of time.

What do you feel like every day?

Tell me about how you feel,
physically and mentally.

My attention span is, like...

real, real short.

I get dizzy a lot.
I lose my balance, you know.

[laughs] I'm hearing all this,
and I'm going, "Okay, yeah."

I mean, it's like I'm talking
to a mirror here, you know?

[Willie] Yes.

That's exactly what happened to me.

It started out neurological
with the blurry vision and the tripping,

and then it progressed to muscle pain.

I went to countless rheumatologists,
neurologists, you name it,

and it's almost a diagnosis of exclusion
to where they rule out everything else.

Based on the story I read
in The New York Times about your symptoms

and how they came on,
to me, it's classic Gulf War stuff.

It really is.

Well, you know,
all this information started coming in,

and I was like, "Wow, it could be that,"
you know? But...

I don't know. Like...

-You okay?
-Yeah.

That's another thing:
his emotional ability.

-Like, he just goes like this.
-It's okay.

You know, moments you have,
we all have 'em, okay?

And it's nothing to be ashamed of.

-Mine's bad.
-[David] Don't worry about it.

-I'll start talking about it and...
-[David] Yeah?

[David] That's okay. Let it go, man.

Don't hold it inside.

And I've read
that you've seen neurologists.

And what are they telling you?

That I'm a strange...

-a strange patient.
-They don't understand? Yeah.

-'Cause they really can't figure it out.
-Right.

Have you gone to
any of the Gulf War illness studies?

No.
How can I find out if I have that illness?

Gulf War illness? There's a thing called
the War Related Illness and Injury Clinic.

Uh, there's an acronym for it.
It's called the WRIISC with a W.

W-R-I-I-S-C.

It's part of the VA,

and all they do is study illnesses
that are related to wartime.

You're there for a couple of days,

and when you get done,
they give you a report

that basically, to their knowledge,
what your issues are,

not only based upon known medical science,

but about their experience
with other Gulf War veterans.

This is a journey you're on, okay?

And none of us know
what the end of the road is.

We don't know where that leads us.

There's some days that I've
got to force myself to get up out of bed

and just get out and breathe fresh air,
you know?

And that's all you can do, man,
is just, you know, wake up

and just make the best
of what the day has in store for you

and what your body and mind
will allow for you to do.

[Willie] At least we woke up, huh?

That's always a good sign, you know?
[laughs]

It always is.

Willie? Hey, man. Give me a hug, man.

[Willie] I really appreciate your help
and information.

Don't ever lose hope.

Once you get into the WRIISC in Palo Alto,

they'll give you a lot of answers
that you don't have now.

You're officially
a Gulf War illness member.

-Thank you. I appreciate it.
-Gulf War illnesses.

I'm glad we came on this trip.

[Lisa] When I saw how many people
suggested Gulf War illness,

I was like, duh!

-You told me.
-[Willie] Like us.

It was all over your records
that you were there.

You know, I had not thought of it,

and your very thoughtful doctor at Mayo
hadn't thought of it. I mean, really...

it was...

I was grateful to get this suggestion
from the people who wrote in.

You definitely have the key components
of Gulf War illness.

Yeah, I told him he's the poster child now

for Gulf War illness, if anything.
[laughs]

The question, to me, is,

a diagnosis is only meaningful
or useful or important

if it tells you something about treatment.

Treatment, yeah.

Nobody can guarantee
that anything is going to...

provide the answer.

That's a scary place to be, I'm sure.

Oh, yeah, it is! [laughs]

You know, his memory loss...

Like, I don't want no guarantees
of bringing the past back

but something to guarantee me
it's not gonna progress.

[Willie] It won't get worse.

I'm telling you.

I'm a good case, huh?

You sure are. I'm so sorry!

[laughing]

You're part of our journey now,
so let's just...

[Lisa laughing]

Well, I'll try and do my part.

[Sandra] Oh, thank you!

-Thank you. Thank you very much.
-All right.

[Willie] Our focus right now is,

hopefully, we'll get the referral we need
to the clinic over there in...

California.

They call it the WRIISC Center.

[Lisa] This is pretty huge.

It looks like the crowd was able

to finally give Willie a diagnosis.

The next step is for him to pursue

medical care and financial support
from the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

It's not just him

but his wife and his family.

They all need the support of the VA system

if what's happening to him is happening
because he served his country.

[Willie] Serena just turned 15.

We're gonna have a quinceañera.

We've been planning it for a while,
probably, like...

a year and a half, maybe.

[Serena] Quinceañera is important
for my parents

because they get to see me grow up

and become a woman.

[Sandra]
You know me and Daddy love you so much.

Keep God in your heart.

God be with you forever and ever,
my princess.

[camera shutter clicking]

I love you, babe.

[indistinct announcement over PA]

[MC] ...Willie and Sandra Reyes.

[cheering]

Serena Reyes!

[Willie]
It's a real honor to do this for her.

She worries a lot about me.

I love my daughter to death.

[Serena] I'm just so happy.

Me and him were
just laughing and laughing.

I'm hoping that things can go back
to the way they were.

I miss those times.

Do I feel like we do have an answer now?
Yes.

But I think if it wouldn't have been
for this crowdsourcing project,

we wouldn't have ever thought
Gulf War illness.

It felt like we were lost,
but now, yes, there's hope. There is hope.

[Willie] I did believe that we were
gonna get some answers, and we did.

Now that the doctors know where to go,

I think this will be
a good turnaround from everything.

[Lisa] One of the amazing things
about Willie's case

is it shows the versatility of the crowd.

They were able to come up with a diagnosis
that no one else had thought of.

But more than that,
it put him in a community of people

who are going through
what he's going through,

and that can make
all the difference in the world.

[dog barking]

[water pouring]

Now I'm very interested in figuring out
what's going on with this next patient.

The case of this little girl
is beyond unusual,

beyond rare,

into a universe of her own.

[indistinct conversation]

[man] Oh, there she goes.

[woman] Oh.

[woman] Kamiyah is six years old,

and we are living day-to-day
with a rare disease.

Oh, she's down,
and she's all the way at the top.

[Lisa] What can I do

to help?

[woman] What if there's
another mom out there like me?

Maybe we're not the only ones.

We can do that.

[woman 2] I think that our kids
are gonna help future kids...

and future parents not go through
what we went through.

[woman 1]
It takes a village to raise a kid.

I'm looking for that village.