It was as if the power had suddenly been sucked from his body. What was it?

And so, early Friday, the woman took her husband to Danbury Hospital, the closest emergency room to the couple’s small Connecticut town. He walked in himself. It was the last time he would walk without assistance for weeks.

Lots of pink pills

He was admitted to hospital. Neurology was consulted and did extensive research: blood tests, CT scans, an MRI, an EEG, an epidural. Although there were some abnormalities, nothing explained his rapid mental and physical decline. There were no signs of infection or tumor. No evidence of seizures. His vitamin levels were normal. And the gastritis he had earlier that spring responded well to a daily acid-lowering medication, pantoprazole.

Although he had the stiffness and tremors that would be typical of a Parkinson’s patient, his rapid decline was not. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can cause rapidly progressive mental and physical disability, but neither the EEG nor MRI showed any evidence of the rare disease. One thing worried his wife: He was taking a very high dose of Pepto-Bismol – four pills a day – prescribed for gastritis. If too much Pepto-Bismol causes problems, it’s usually due to an overload of the aspirin-like compound in the drug, but when they checked, that level was normal.

Finally, after five days of intensive examination, the neurologists had found nothing and decided to refer him to a neurologist at Yale University. Although he wasn’t sick enough to need a hospital stay, his doctors and wife agreed he was too weak to go home. Instead, he was sent to a short-term rehabilitation center, where he could get the care he needed and possibly regain some of his strength.

It was evening by the time the man and his wife arrived at CareOne’s River Glen Health Care Center in Southbury, Conn. Nicole DiCenso, the nurse on duty, came to visit the patient as soon as he arrived in his room. From the beginning, DiCenso felt there was something strange about his story. He looked healthy and strong, fitter than her parents, who were about his age. And yet, when she tried to move him to the chair scale to weigh him, she was surprised that he was too weak to move himself to the edge of the bed – even with her help. It was difficult to reconcile his severe disability with his wife’s report that he had been walking 10 to 15 miles a day a few weeks earlier. It was as if the power had somehow been sucked from his body, leaving his muscles present but powerless.