The most detailed account, "Blue People of Troublesome Creek," was published in 1982 by the University of Indiana's Cathy Trost. Madison Cawein III, a hematologist at the University of Kentucky's Lexington Medical Clinic, drew family charts and blood samples to better understand the genetic disorder. Most of what is known about methemoglobinemia comes from one doctor's study of the Fugate ancestry in the early 1960s. Green's condition was such an anomaly that hematologists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston paid for him to fly East several years ago just to study him. "The red blood cells don't give me enough oxygen." Hemoglobin is responsible for distributing oxygen to the body and without oxygen, the heart, brain and muscles can die. Methemoglobin cannot effectively release oxygen. Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder in which an abnormal amount of methemoglobin - a form of hemoglobin - is produced. But in Green's case, his body is starved of oxygen and every organ is affected. In the mildest form, methemoglobinemia causes no harm, and most of the Fugates lived well into their 80s. "It's a disease that one learns about in medical school and it's infrequent enough to be on every exam in hematology." Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic. Other relatives, perhaps like Green's paternal relatives, scattered throughout Virginia and Arkansas.Įven today, "you almost never see a patient with it," said Dr. In the 1980s and 1990s, those mountain people dispersed, and the family gene pool became much more diverse. People have pointed out the Fugates to me before." "It's hard to describe and it's kind of weird not knowing where the condition of mine came from. ![]() "I just want to know where I came from and to know that side of my family history," said Green. His mother wandered in and out of his life and he was raised by his grandparents. A sister was put up for adoption and Green doesn't know the whereabouts of two brothers.
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