ABC Image Group LA(LOS ANGELES) — Actress Chandra Wilson, who plays a doctor on ABC’s long-running hit drama Grey’s Anatomy, has been involved with her family in a real-life medical saga.
Wilson, who has played Dr. Miranda Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy for the past 13 seasons, told Thursday’s Good Morning America about the uncertainty and fear she faced when her 23-year-old daughter, Sarina McFarlane, first became ill as a teenager.
It began with nausea, vomiting and crippling abdominal pain, the cause of which baffled doctors. Wilson said they went nearly 10 months before she finally got a diagnosis — cyclic vomiting syndrome, or CVS, a neurological disorder characterized by a series of prolonged attacks of severe nausea and vomiting, with no apparent cause.
“It presented itself like a real bad case of food poisoning,” Wilson explained. “It didn’t go away for four or five days so because of that we went to the ER.”
Wilson said emergency room doctors hydrated her daughter but none of the tests shed any light on the cause.
“A month later, the exact same presentation happened and this was month after month after month for 10 months,” she said.
Wilson kept a running log of her daughter’s symptoms in multiple, 5-inch thick binders to note any progress or changes, and to streamline the often-arduous check-in process at hospitals.
According to Dr. Richards Boles, medical director at Courtagen Life Sciences — a medical facility that specializes in genetic testing — Wilson’s could have suffered years had it not been for her mom’s tenacity.
“Serena was lucky because of the care and persistence of her mother,” Boles said. “Most patients go many years without a diagnosis.”
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
