Help save Jia Lin from SCID

My little nephew, 冯家麟 (Féng Jiā Lín), was born 7 pounds 4 ounces on April 9th of this year. The family nicknamed him “the little bull” because they wished to instill in him a strength that was sorely needed in a family that has suffered much in recent years. The little bull had an older brother that was born in 2018 but passed away barely two months later due to complications from the surgery that attempted to correct volvulus and a grandmother with breast cancer who is just recovering from a recent mastectomy earlier this year.

 

My little nephew suffers from a hereditary condition called SCID (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency) which means the baby’s immune system is not able to fight off infections. The condition is better known in pop culture films The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and the more recent Bubble Boy, both based on the story of real person David Vetter.

 

Being born in the 2nd tier Chinese city of Haikou without sufficient prescreening and routine testing, the baby’s condition was not discovered until August when symptoms of ear infections and pneumonia landed him in the emergency room. Right now he is struggling with a never-ending fever waiting for a life-saving stem cell transplant surgery that the local hospital has neither the equipment nor the expertise for. Thankfully the hospital was able to fly a specialist from Shanghai in with the minimum required equipment and found a matching donor for him (my nephew does not have any healthy siblings for a match). The surgery’s prep work is done and we are just waiting for the baby’s fever to stabilize enough to conduct it.

 

The expenses incurred from the hospital stay, prep work for the surgery, and the upcoming fee from the surgery, being added on top of their previous medical expenses, are quickly overwhelming a father who works as a truck driver and a mother who is a bookkeeper. They are in danger of both losing another child and falling financially into an unrecoverable situation. Please help save my baby nephew’s life and help his family bring around a normal life together with him.