Foreword – University of Chicago Hospital

Linda was first diagnosed with liver disease in the mid 1960’s, when she was a student at Kansas State Teacher’s College in Emporia, Kansas. She was so ill and so jaundiced that the doctors at the college clinic knew her situation was beyond anything they could handle, and she was transferred to the University of Chicago Hospital. At the time, medical knowledge about liver disease was in its relative infancy, and Linda was treated with massive doses of Prednisone. The doctors told Linda and her mother that Linda was not expected to survive. Several biopsies of Linda’s liver turned up no pathological findings the doctors could use as a basis for any treatment other than the steroids. After many months in the hospital, Linda decided if she was about to die she could at least go back to work, and finish school, rather than lying in a hospital bed awaiting the inevitable.