Jake Dowell faced a difficult test attempting to stick in the NHL as a fifth round draft pick for a Blackhawks team on the rise.
But it paled in comparison to the importance of the test he took last year. Both his younger brother and father had been inflicted with Huntington's disease, a crippling condition in which nerve cells break down in the brain over the course of a person's life. The disease affects one in 6,800 people and there is no known cure.
For years Dowell, now with the AHL's IceHogs, lived with the uncertainty of having a terminal disease, finally leading him to take the test.