"A woman shot him five times and he didn't bleed out because his blood was so thick."įor that very reason, Green takes three different blood-thinning drugs to prevent blood clots and morphine for the pain. The disorder once saved his father's life, according to a story told by Green's mother. Green has M disease, which is caused by defects in the hemoglobin molecule itself and can be passed down from only one parent. In type 2 - also called hemoglobin M disease - the enzyme doesn't work anywhere in the body. In type one, the red blood cells lack the enzyme. In Green's case, the disorder was genetic and occurs when there is a problem with the enzyme called cytochrome b5 reductase. Methemoglobinemia may be passed down through families or can be caused by exposure to certain drugs, chemicals or foods. "I don't think they had even heard the name." "It was never diagnosed and doctors were baffled," said Jennifer Horsley. The Horsleys said they know of no other children or grandchildren who inherited the gene for methemoglobinemia. He grew up in Ohio, but his parents had met in Carter County, Kentucky. "My grandmother was blue," said Horsley's husband John H. The family presumes that Parker's mother, Mary McCleese Parker, also had the condition. Parker died at 73 of liver cancer nine years ago, "So we may never know," said her daughter-in-law. It was so pronounced that everybody thought she was sick." "The color depended on when she got upset or was cold. "They were like that almost all the time," said Horsley, 62, a retired nurse. "Her lips and nail beds were perpetually blue." "She was from the upper regions of Kentucky," she said. Adams Horsley of Hartford, Ind., told in 2012 that she is certain that her mother-in-law, Amanda Susan Parker Horsley, was descended from the family. Green is not the only person to wonder if there is a genetic connection to the Blue Fugates. He now lives in Alaska, according to Facebook.
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The last in the direct line of Fugates to inherit the gene was Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy, whose skin at birth was "as Blue as Lake Louise," according to doctors at the time. The most detailed account, "Blue People of Troublesome Creek," was published in 1982 by the University of Indiana's Cathy Trost. Madison Cawein III, a hematologist at the University of Kentucky's Lexington Medical Clinic, drew family charts and blood samples to better understand the genetic disorder. Most of what is known about methemoglobinemia comes from one doctor's study of the Fugate ancestry in the early 1960s. Green's condition was such an anomaly that hematologists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston paid for him to fly East several years ago just to study him. "The red blood cells don't give me enough oxygen." Hemoglobin is responsible for distributing oxygen to the body and without oxygen, the heart, brain and muscles can die. Methemoglobin cannot effectively release oxygen. Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder in which an abnormal amount of methemoglobin - a form of hemoglobin - is produced. But in Green's case, his body is starved of oxygen and every organ is affected. In the mildest form, methemoglobinemia causes no harm, and most of the Fugates lived well into their 80s. "It's a disease that one learns about in medical school and it's infrequent enough to be on every exam in hematology." Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic. Other relatives, perhaps like Green's paternal relatives, scattered throughout Virginia and Arkansas.Įven today, "you almost never see a patient with it," said Dr. In the 1980s and 1990s, those mountain people dispersed, and the family gene pool became much more diverse. People have pointed out the Fugates to me before." "It's hard to describe and it's kind of weird not knowing where the condition of mine came from. "I just want to know where I came from and to know that side of my family history," said Green. His mother wandered in and out of his life and he was raised by his grandparents. A sister was put up for adoption and Green doesn't know the whereabouts of two brothers.
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