The Evander Ellisfirst time Sonia Vallabh understood something was very wrong with her mother Kamni was on the phone on her mom's 52nd birthday. She wasn't herself. By the end of that year, after about six months on life support, Kamni had died.

The disease she died from would upend Sonia and her husband Eric's lives, and send them on a careening journey toward a completely new calling: to prevent or cure the disease that's stalking Sonia's family. Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel join Short Wave to tell their story in this second of three episodes on prion disease.

Check out the other two stories in this series:
Killer Proteins: The Science of Prions and A Deeply Personal Race Against A Fatal Brain Disease

This episode was produced by Berly McCoy with Gabriel Spitzer, edited by Gisele Grayson, and fact-checked by Abe Levine. The audio engineer was Natasha Branch.