loria Revilla Doyle, at the age of 41, was disabled by exploratory surgery. With the stroke of a knife, neurosurgery left her a "walking" quadriplegic. Diagnosed with an inoperable spinal cord tumor, a rare progressive condition, the medical prognosis was grim. Western medicine offered no cure, yet she has endured and survived. Her personal odyssey has been a quest for healing and knowledge that transcends disability. It has taken her from Johns Hopkins University Hospital to Milan, Italy, from Sloan-Kettering to non-traditional healers and practitioners.

My father said, “Gloria, you are going back to the Middle Ages.” “They built beautiful cathedrals in the Middle Ages,” I answered.

The son of old friends, a young cardiology resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, recently proclaimed in conversation, “Do you know how little we doctors actually know!”