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In early September of this year my wife starting having problems with her feet going numb. Because she had no feeling in her feet she couldn't maintain her balance and it's become harder and harder to walk. The numbness has spread and now she can't feel her legs and even has occasional tightness in her chest. When we have to do any walking outside she now sits in a wheelchair and I push her around. She has been getting a lot of tests done and the doctors believe it is now either Sarcoidosis or Lymphoma. She is going in for...

Greetings FRiends, I know, I know. It's a little crazy asking for medical feedback on the web, but I always trust this community to give me unfiltered and personal experience. I suppose you could say that I am somewhat incredulous when it comes to some of the big, pharma-sponsored websites. I realize that this is in NO WAY scientific. My wife has been ill for the last year; extreme fatigue and soreness in her joints. It is some kind of rheumatoid arthritis. Her doctor has treated her with numerous conventional drugs; methotextrate and prednisone. She's had mixed results. Her doctor...

In the first clinical study to clearly link World Trade Center dust to serious and sometimes fatal diseases, doctors have found that the number of New York City rescue and recovery workers with a rare type of lung-scarring condition soared in the year after the trade center collapsed. Doctors from the Fire Department and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that 13 firefighters and emergency medical service workers with the department developed sarcoidosis, a debilitating illness in which the lungs and other organs develop inflammation that produces lumps of cells, called granulomas. The illness can be controlled with...

In 2004, Kenneth R. Feinberg, special master of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, awarded $2.6 million to the family of a downtown office worker who died from a rare lung disease five months after fleeing from the dust cloud released when the twin towers fell. That decision made the worker, Felicia Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old lawyer, the first official fatality of the dust, and one of only two deaths to be formally linked to the toxic air at ground zero. The New York City medical examiner’s office, however, has refused to put her on its official list of 9/11...

As they push their investigation into the health risks to workers in the recovery and cleanup operations at ground zero, medical detectives are focusing on a group of lung diseases that can lead to long-term disabilities and, in some cases, death. After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase...