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Intermediate
Text: "Wheelchair-bound woman diagnosed illness online" (left)
Reading comprehension (below)
Vocab: Treating illness
Prefixes: "on" and "off"
What do you think?
Advanced
Reading comprehension
Health idioms

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"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

—Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

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Learn English #5 •Intermediate | Advanced

Read the newspaper story below, and then answer the questions that follow it.

Wheelchair-bound woman diagnosed her illness online

An Italian woman who was previously confined to a wheelchair has gone trekking in Nepal after diagnosing her illness on the Internet.
Stefania Vanoni's illness had puzzled her doctors in Baceno in northern Italy for more than two decades.

Endless tests failed to find out why she was unable to walk, reported Italian media. But after identifying the symptoms that had left her crippled as the condition known as ataxia, she is now walking again and has to take one small tablet a day.

After reading how an inability to coordinate muscular movements was a symptom of certain nervous disorders, she asked doctors to perform a DNA test which confirmed that she had ataxia.

After six months of physiotherapy and treatments, she was able to walk again for the first time in 23 years, and lead "a normal life".

Vanoni now wants to make up for lost time, and following her trekking holiday in Nepal she is planning another trekking trip to Peru.

• Text from Ananova.com

Reading comprehension

True or false?

		true	false
1.	Doctor's discovered the cause of Stefania's illness on the Internet.
2.	Stefania was ill for over 20 years.
3.	Stefania didn't want to visit doctors to do any tests.
4.	To diagnose Stefania's illness doctors had to repeat a test they had done.
5.	Stefania was unable to walk for six months.
6.	Stefania can walk long distances now.

Exercises

1. Treating illness

Match the words (1-10) with the definitions (a-j).

Please ensure the Java Virtual Machine is installed and enabled

2. Prefixes: "on" and "off"

Use the words below to complete the sentences.

Please ensure the Java Virtual Machine is installed and enabled

3. More exercises
You will find more exercises relating to this text in the Advanced section:

Health idioms

What do you think?

Would you ever consider self-diagnosis using the Internet? Do you think you can trust most information that you find on the Internet? What are the good and bad things about having access to this kind of information?

Have you ever read up on an illness on the Internet? Did you find the information useful? Do you know of any useful health sites on the Internet?

More exercises

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