Family Leave Quarantine To Save Daughter From ‘Childhood Alzheimer’s’

Six-year-old Eliza O’Neill of South Carolina was born a healthy little girl, but two years ago, her life, along with her entire family’s lives, changed dramatically.

Since being diagnosed with the rare degenerative disease Sanfilippo Syndrome, Type A, Eliza has spent more than the past 700 days in isolation in her home…and so has the rest of her family, in an effort to save her life.

The disease that is sometimes called Child’s Alzheimers has caused Eliza to lose the ability to do basic functions like sing her favorite song, recite the alphabet, and even tell her parents Glenn and Cara “I love you,” according to TODAY.

“It takes away the brain so very quickly,” Glenn O’Neill told ABC News, of the currently incurable disease. However, that hasn’t stopped Glenn for searching for one. The determined dad started a foundation and raised millions online to get his daughter experimental treatment.

According to ABC News, Eliza’s parents learned soon after her diagnosis that if she contracted a common childhood virus, she would be excluded from participating in one promising gene therapy trial. That’s when the family, including Eliza’s older brother Beckham, put themselves into quarantine in hopes of saving her.

“It’s all a very, very tough call to do it,” O’Neill said, explaining that the quarantine period was stretched further than first expected. “It went from 100 days to 300 days and 500 days,” O’Neill said of how his family spent holidays, birthdays, and the most beautiful days indoors. Then, this Spring, they finally got the callfrom Nationwide Children’s Hospital that the study would begin.

“After all this time and the difficulty of the journey, you just get paranoid,” said O’Neill. “I wanted to just cradle her for a week and hold her in my harms and hug her.”

“It wasn’t until she went into the room and was put under and the doctors came out of 30 minutes later” to say she had received the medication “that we were able to let down and cry and say this is happening,” O’Neill said. Now they hope to give back, by helping to raise more funds and draw attention to the rare condition, so other children can be helped.

Click here to learn more about Eliza’s journey and please share her GoFundMe page with friends.

Please help keep this brave little girl in your thoughts and prayers and SHARE her story with friends and loved ones on Facebook to spread the word on her shocking condition.

[Featured Image: TODAY]

Family Leave Quarantine To Save Daughter From ‘Childhood Alzheimer’s’ is an article from: LifeDaily