Jan. 10, 2008, 4:15PM

By DALE ROBERTSON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

In the past year, Jessica Armenteros-Word has been afforded the wondrous opportunity to celebrate a birth and a rebirth.

One little baby, two new lives.

Of course, it's possible there's no connection whatsoever — medically anyway — between Cameron Sarah Word's entering the world last Aug. 28 and her mother's recent remarkable return to form as an elite distance runner after a nearly four-year cycle of sickness, patches of recovery and debilitating setbacks. Could Cameron's coming have sent the poison in Jessica packing? Did having the child somehow recalibrate Jessica's immune system, which had been knocked way off kilter by what's called Guillain-Barré syndrome?

The doctors can only shrug. Much still isn't known about the insidious workings of GB, a disease causing the immune system to go on a rampage against the body's peripheral nervous system. But nobody disagrees that the circumstantial evidence indicates something has changed inside Jessica.

And even if it hasn't ...