March being Amyloidosis Awareness Month, it's a good time to tell the story of Steven Szymanski, who, until finally diagnosed with it, was roughly as familiar with this rare disease as you likely are.
One can be forgiven for not having heard of amyloidosis - though we're all familiar with Alzheimer's disease, its most common variety. Beyond the skull's confines, the most prevalent form of systemic amyloidosis happens when blood-plasma cells gone rogue (cancers and other diseases cause this) make misshapen immune-system proteins. These misfolded light-chain immunoglobulin proteins link up with each other like the teeth of a zipper and create what Dr. Tomer Mark, a University of Colorado School of Medicine and UCHealth blood cancer specialist, described as "a sticky schmutz."