Hello, my name is Darrell Hansen. I live in Vale Oregon. If you want to know me I will let you read my soul. I have poured it out onto the pages of musical composition for all to read and hear.

"Jeannette's Song" was written in honor of my wife, whose name is obviously Jeannette. I watch as moment by moment, day by day, year after year, she keeps pushing on. Everything she does requires much more effort because she suffers from a rare genetic disorder known as Wilson's Disease. Wilson's Disease is also known as Hepatolenticular Degeneration. At the time she was diagnosed, very little was known about the disease, because it is such a rare disorder, effecting approximately 1 in a 100,000 people. 


At that time, the standard treatment was to put the patient on a drug known as Penicillamine. Unfortunately, this drug took patients who were already experiencing neurological symptoms from bad to worse. It basically turned the patient into a vegetable. From that point, the patient had to learn how to walk and talk all over again, and there was much unnecessary brain damage. There are much better treatments today. Unfortunately, these new and better treatments didn't come along until many years after Jeannette was first diagnosed. 

It is also disturbing to realize that Wilson's Disease is still being misdiagnosed today. I had been reading the story of Jeff Dirlam on the Internet. It is a tragic story of a father's struggle with the medical system just to get a proper diagnosis and treatment for his son suffering from Wilson's Disease. His son lost his life, and this may have been totally unnecessary. This is just one in many instances where Wilsons patients had to deal with permanent disabling damage and even death unnecessarily. Anyone who understands the nature of this disease knows that people will die from this disease, and accurate and timely diagnosis of this disease is critical.