Sheila Advento was not feeling well. It was July 6, 2003, and her mother’s house in northern New Jersey was filled with people. Sheila and her mom were there, along with Sheila’s boyfriend, sister, and brother-in-law—a slice of a huge extended family, many of whom, like Sheila and her parents, had immigrated to the US from the Philippines. They ate cheeseburgers and adobo and raised Pabst Blue Ribbon and San Miguel to toast one another, independence, good health, and freedom—almost all of which Sheila, who was 26, was about to lose. For days she’d been having headaches. Her stomach wasn’t right. She was starting to think she had the flu. She trudged to a basement bedroom to lie down. Family members took turns checking on her. When her mother, Peachie, looked in around dinner time, she found Sheila lying on the bathroom floor. Peachie, who was a nurse manager at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, took one look at her daughter and … [Read more...] about The Devastating Allure of Medical Miracles