LADUE, Mo. -- Over 4 consecutive days in January, Margaret Hvatum ran a 5K, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a full marathon. The 70-year-old covered a combined distance that's nearly equivalent to running the length of Manhattan four times.
By the end of the month, she was in a hospital bed.
Hvatum, a part-time computer science professor, has a weakened immune system due to primary immunodeficiency, which makes it difficult for her body to fight infections. Prior to her 2005 diagnosis, she had four bouts of shingles.
For more than a decade she relied on an expensive medicine to treat her chronic condition -- and relied on her insurance to pay for it.
Then the denial letters came.
