Ihad just stepped out of the shower when my husband, Scott, called from the hospital, where our 9-year-old daughter had been a patient in the paediatric ICU for four weeks. He had relieved me that morning so I could go home, shower and return for a meeting with the doctors about our daughter’s condition.

When he told me our daughter’s diagnosis was “neuromyelitis optica,” a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system, my heart didn’t just sink. It stopped. A silent, internal arrest. In a single moment, my physician’s mind ran through the prognosis. Rare, incurable, potentially fatal. My heart broke under the weight of my devastation.

Steam still hung in the air, my wet hair dripped as I clutched the towel around me, my skin still damp. When the words came through the

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