He couldn't turn off the light and walk across the bedroom to the bed if he was trying to talk.

And if you gave him instructions to do three sequential things — "Pour me a glass of water, turn out the light and bring it down here" — he couldn't do it.

He walked leaning to one side. (Guthrie's wife said that Woody walked like he was carrying a guitar on his shoulder.)

And he was getting so thin that Lael was becoming frightened.

She asked the children to add to the list.

Jane, a psychology student at the time, had just finished reading a chapter in a textbook that talked about Huntington's. "Mom, ask the doctor if there's any chance it's that," she said.

Lael didn't know what it was, but she wrote it at the bottom of her list: Huntington's?

· · · · ·

The doctor said no. John's euphoria pointed more to bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression), he said. But he decided to be on the safe side and send them to a neurologist.

Lael will never forget that doctor's appointment. John was taking a simple function test. Touch your nose with your fingertip. Walk a straight line.

Like a drunk pulled over on a busy Saturday night, he was failing it.

She was almost embarrassed to ask about Huntington's, because the other doctor had pooh-poohed it. She had to screw up her nerve.

"Is there any chance it's Huntington's?"

The doctor gave her a brief but curious look. "It almost certainly is," he said.

The Askews still had no idea what Huntington's actually was. But like so many others who have taken a string of disturbing symptoms and tried to find a diagnosis, they were relieved. They had been given a reason — with a name — for John's increasingly erratic behavior. It wasn't his fault. And he wasn't mentally ill. It was a physical disease that could be pointed to and blamed and treated. Or so they thought.

They didn't know that Huntington's is incurable. That it kills — but only after a long time of eating away at a person. That treatment helps symptoms but the disease progresses unchecked.