1. The patient

Mary Sage lay frozen in place, in such severe pain she couldn’t will herself off the chiropractor’s table.

It was 2015, and Sage, then a 56-year-old program operation analyst at the University of Washington, was desperate for relief from back aches so intense they could make her double over and collapse. The pain was sharp, energetic, searing, as if electricity was ricocheting from her hips to her neck and down again. Before long, it had become debilitating enough that Sage began relying on a large walking stick that made her feel like Moses.

Sage’s primary care doctor thought she might have a kidney issue and recommended drinking more water. Physical therapists wrote it off as arthritis. “All of them were actually correct,” she said, “but the big thing everyone missed wa

See Full Page