A remote disease comes very close to home for Queens resident Nicole Ferraro.

Nicole Ferraro is a writer, editor, and storyteller living in NYC. Her personal essays have been published in The New York Times, Story Collider Magazine, The Frisky, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Nicole is also the cohost of New York Story Exchange, a monthly storytelling series at Cornelia Street Cafe. For more information, visit: www.facebook.com/NewYorkStoryExchange. By day she earns her keep as the editor in chief of Netted by the Webbys.

This story originally aired on October 16, 2015.