
I don’t like to see people suffer like this,” said Glas, who worked with the Mayo Clinic staff to treat Swanson back at Edward Hospital in Naperville. At 42, she was diagnosed with limbic encephalitis - a condition in which the body creates antibodies that attack brain cells and cause swelling, Glas said. Even the smallest tasks exhausted her, and she could sometimes sleep for 24 hours straight, she said.ĭesperate for answers, she went to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where doctors performed a spinal tap.

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She had trouble with her memory, forgetting basic things such as the code to open the garage door or a pot burning on the stove. Swanson juggled appointments with endocrinologists, rheumatologists and Glas, her general practitioner, none of whom could initially identify the root of her health issues, she said.Īs the mysterious pain, fatigue and stiffness continued, Swanson began using a cane to ensure she didn’t lose her balance. The fatigue persisted when she returned home, accompanied by painful aches on one side of her body. She and her husband, Dale, went on hiking and snorkeling vacations multiple times a year.ĭuring one such trip to Mexico in 2005, Swanson felt unusually tired. She chose healthy foods and did kickboxing workouts several times a week. She had a high-paying job in sales at a risk management company. Instead, she began attending a nondenominational Christian church in Naperville.Īt her 40th birthday, Swanson felt blessed, healthy and comfortable. But when she divorced in 1993 and remarried in 1998, she felt like an outsider because she could no longer receive Communion, according to church doctrine. She returned to Catholicism after she was married and gave birth to her son. In her 20s, after her mother died, Swanson turned away from the church in anger. She learned from her mother to wear her best clothes to church every Sunday, and to kiss the rosary after praying as a sign of respect, a ritual she kept in her adult years, she said. She went to Catholic grade school, had an uncle who was a priest, a cousin who was an abbot and an aunt who was a nun. Swanson was raised in a devout Catholic family. “It’s a wonderful way of asking where that goodness comes from and where it could possibly meet us.” Catholic upbringing Johann Roten, a director of research at the University of Dayton in Ohio and former adviser to Pope Benedict who has served on committees investigating the validity of apparitions. “On the one hand, if spiritually, these events can help you, you are allowed to follow the spirituality that’s connected to it - but it’s not an obligation of faith,” said the Rev. They’re telling them to believe in miracles. While the recognitions are rare, the church is open to their possibility and actively investigates them, because these remarkable events call people to trust their faith.

Another 11 have received approval from the local bishop for prayer and devotion at the site. In those cases, the church has ruled that there is a “supernatural character” in eight of them.

Since the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church has publicly recognized 386 apparitions, or appearances of something remarkable or unexpected.
