Rare

I saw a patient with Menkes Disease, a rare and serious disease in which the body cannot adequately absorb copper from the diet. Most doctors know this disease only as a paragraph in one of their textbooks, or as the subject of twenty seconds of one medical school lecture. Although it is tragic to see a patient with an incurable disease, encountering the flesh-and-blood embodiment of this rare entity felt something like a stroke of luck. I now am among the privileged few to have seen the real thing up close.