The nurses and doctors summoned to the hospital room of 16-year-old Pablo Garcia early on the morning of July 27, 2013, knew something was terribly wrong. Just past midnight, Pablo had complained of numbness and tingling all over his body. Two hours later, the tingling had grown worse.
Although Pablo had a dangerous illness—a rare genetic disease called NEMO syndrome that leads to a lifetime of frequent infections and bowel inflammation—his admission to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center’s Benioff Children’s Hospital had been for a routine colonoscopy, to evaluate a polyp and an area of intestinal narrowing.
