and he would have a real hard time catching his breath. he d [ gasping ] and we thought, golly, maybe he s exercising too much or something. the symptoms lingered. one month later, reese seemed to be getting worse, not better. initially, we thought maybe it s because reese is in preschool, in nursery school and you know how kids just they constantly get contaminate one another with a little bug or virus. doctors could find nothing wrong. tests were inconclusive. when he was taken for allergy tests, those, too, were negative. soon, reese s problems moved from respiratory to neurological. reese, who had learned his abcs from a to z, suddenly couldn t get past d. he was deteriorating quickly and we were taking him to doctor after doctor after doctor. and they told us that something was wrong, but they didn t know what it was.