Read Angel’s back story.

Episode 2

Sadie: Seizures and a Difficult Decision

Sadie was a happy and active 6-year-old. Then, after a family vacation to the Catskills, she began having seizures that affected the area around her mouth and the left side of her body. After months searching for an effective treatment, doctors told Sadie’s parents they needed to consider brain surgery — a terrifying prospect for them. They turned to Dr. Sanders and Times readers for another opinion. “I was rooting for Sadie’s mom,” Dr. Sanders said. “She really set out to find the experts. And I think that the huge, wide variety of thoughts from the crowd gave her some hope of another possibility.”

Read Sadie’s back story.

Episode 3

Willie: A Veteran Losing His Memory

After suffering from repeated seizures, Willie, a veteran of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, also began to show signs of devastating memory loss. When Willie’s story was shared with Times readers, supporters rallied around him and shared ideas that caught Dr. Sanders off guard. “The fact that he was a veteran — I had not paid enough attention to it,” she said. “I’m rarely surprised, but the crowd was smarter than the doctors in this case.”

Read Willie’s back story.

Episode 4

Kamiyah: A Rare Condition and a Call for Support

For Kamiyah, every day is punctuated with hundreds of moments of temporary paralysis. After tests, doctors revealed that she had an extremely rare genetic mutation that caused a slowdown of one of the mechanisms controlling activity in the brain and spinal cord. That, in turn, caused her condition. “Unless a diagnosis comes connected with something that helps you, it is just a word,” Dr. Sanders said. “So in the case of Kamiyah, we thought we would ask our readers to report back on what they knew about this condition — and it was amazing . She had an instant community.”

Read Kamiyah’s back story.

Episode 5

Lashay: A Teenager Fighting to Keep Down Food and Drink

During a family vacation to Costa Rica, Lashay was bitten by a raccoon. Not long after, the 14-year-old began feeling constantly nauseated. “The response for Lashay in particular was overwhelming,” Dr. Sanders said. “We got so many people who wrote in to say the exact same thing happened to my sister, my brother, my child, to me. Seeing a young girl who looked healthy but was so debilitated really struck a chord.”

Read Lashay’s back story.

Episode 6

Matt: Strange Sensations of Déjà vu

For over a year, Matt would regularly experience a creepy feeling of déjà vu, a cold sweat and nausea. Often after these feelings washed over him, he would faint. After Dr. Sanders wrote about Matt’s symptoms, hundreds of readers wrote in with possible explanations. “The diagnosis I focused on was the cause of his loss of consciousness,” Dr. Sanders said. “Remarkably, the readers came up with a completely different diagnosis, which was also true, and this second diagnosis was really impactful.”

Read Matt’s back story.

Episode 7

Joe and Ann: Two Patients With Paralysis

Joe began losing sensation in his feet and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Ann experiences moments of paralysis on the right side of her body. Their cases are quite different, but their symptoms actually provide a great deal of insight into each other’s conditions. “The brain and the nerves are an area of deep uncertainty in medicine, and that’s why it worked so well to present their cases together,” Dr. Sanders said.

Read Joe’s back story.

Read Ann’s back story.