Willie

This is a story about Willie. He's five and he has a disease no one knows anything about, let alone fix. It's called XIAP and basically it's an immune deficiency disease. He's one of about 10 documented cases in the world. Certain blood cells in his body reproduce to no end and start dying off. The dead ones collect in his liver, spleen and lymph nodes. It puts him in high risk for cancer, gives him frequent fevers in the 104-105 range and robs him of a normal childhood. He misses school and can rarely play in sports. He likes having blood drawn, actually watches the needle go in, multiple times because his veins are scarred over and the nurse misses, because he's in the doctors office at least once a week. I spent some time with him over the past week.

Josh did a fantastic job on the story:

http://www.craigdailypress.com/section/archive/story/26732