Preface
Terri McCort was expecting a baby.1 She was already five days overdue. As she sat down for dinner, she felt an unusual pain at the base of her throat. She didn’t know it, but she was in mortal danger. Deep inside her chest, the largest blood vessel in her body, the aorta, was beginning to tear itself apart. If left untreated, it would rupture massively, gushing blood like an open fire hydrant. Terri and her unborn baby would die.
Terri was hard to ignore as she burst through the doors of her local emergency room. She was tall and long-armed like Abraham Lincoln. And, as has been speculated about Lincoln, Terri has Marfan syndrome, a genetic disease of the connective tissue that can render the aorta fatally fragile. The disease had already ...
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