karen merten: my little brother could have had this, yeah. they thought it was cp, and then-- that's what they wrote it down as, because they didn't know. nine months later, the older boy was sick with the same sort of thing. karen merten: his skin started to get rubbery. so i called dr. mccabe, and they met us with just-- as soon as we got there, they took him back, and brought him back in ten minutes. they almost lost him. they were afraid that he might die if it wasn't taken care of. and it was then that we made the diagnosis. what they learned was that chris also suffered from a form of addison's disease. edward mccabe: when we're under stress, when we have an infection, a part of our brain knows to put out a hormone that stimulates the adrenal cortex to make steroids. chris doesn't have a normal adrenal cortex, so his mother has to become that regulatory instrument for him that is normally handled without us ever knowing about it. when he gets-- starts throwing up, we don't wait till he gets real bad. i usually up his dose and then wait