Mystery disease unraveled by Stanford neurologist

At first, Marc Laderriere thought that his decreasing energy was just age catching up to him — he was about to be 50. But something about that explanation didn’t sit right.

"At one point, one of my doctors said, ‘This is definitely a little strange. I don’t know what you have, but it could be nerves,’" Laderriere recalled.

He was experiencing a set of symptoms that were unusual but did not strike him as significant: Hot weather sapped his strength and made him dizzy, but he was sweating less. In cool weather, he never got goose bumps.

As a young man growing up in France, Laderriere had always been active. “I did a lot of skiing, a lot of swimming,” he said. When he came to work in the United States, as a director of wine sales for the Vina Robles Winery & Vineyards in Paso Robles, he said he became a workaholic. “I completely accepted that way of life,” he said.

The more he traveled for his job, the less time and attention he paid to his health until he recognized, with some discomfort, that he was not in such great shape any more. He knew he should add exercise to his daily routine, but the fatigue he felt was overwhelming.

Laderriere, who lives in Paso Robles, started first with visits to local doctors. He had a variety of standard tests, with the thought that he might have developed diabetes. That was not the case. When one physician suggested it could be nerves, he went to see a local neurologist who sent him back to his original physician, still without a diagnosis. His symptoms continued and, finally, a local doctor suggested Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

During his first visit, he met with a group of physicians who asked him a lot questions,. “They were picking my brain,” he said, “asking me, ‘What’s wrong with this?’ I did not think to mention to them that I wasn’t sweating, but my wife was with me and she did. One of the doctors said, ‘Hmm, I think you may want to meet Dr. Jaradeh.’”

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