Malformation: When Bad Things Happen to the Right Kind of People

Paul McMonagle was a student at Auburn in the spring of 2000 when about two weeks before finals, he suffered an excruciating headache while watching a movie with his girlfriend.

He stood up, threw up from the pressure, and passed out.

For the next two years, he only remembers snapshots of his life. Paramedics from the local hospital in Opelika, Alabama, transported him to East Alabama Medical Center after determining he had suffered a traumatic brain injury from a rupture of a genetic anom...