Surgery, Medical Costs for Adam

 My brother, Adam, has dealt his whole life with a rare and painful disease known as Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia, or HED. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypohidrotic_ectodermal_dysplasia)

He has grown up without sweat glands, with very dry, cracked skin, with pulminary complications, and with underdeveloped hair and teeth, among other things...Which brings us to this fundraising page.

Adam is a tough kid.  He has been in and out of the hospital all of his life due to his condition. Despite all of these obstacles, he has held strong, and grown to be a very smart and talented young man.
Now he is faced with another issue: His HED has kept him from developing an adult set of teeth. Right now, Adam cannot chew any of his food, and this is causing SERIOUS MALNUTRITION issues. Adam is allergic to much of what would be required in an adequate liquid diet.
With the last two of his juvenile teeth wasting away, Adam is in DESPERATE need of dental implants!   He cannot get dentures because the underdeveloped bone in his jaw cannot support them.  Instead he requires a painful surgery, beginning with a grafting of bone to fill in what his jaw is lacking, then titanium screws will need to be drilled into his jaw to anchor the new ceramic implants.  Painful stuff, but he has been through worse.  Doctors once said he would never grow tall, or even talk....I can tell you they were wrong on that!

There's not much anyone can do to help him through the pain, but there IS something you CAN do!   The insurance will NOT cover the IMPLANTS that Adam so desperately needs!  They claim, despite doctors' intervention, that they are cosmetic, and therefore not eligable for coverage!  Our parents have done so much for him, but the financial burden of a $70,000.00 surgery is simply beyond their ability to deal with.

So I say instead of trying to grab the money from the greedy hands of an insurance company, we turn to YOU, our FRIENDS and FAMILY for help!  We ask only what you can give...a dollar, maybe more.   If EVERYONE pitches in a little, it will go a LONG way! 

$70,000.00 is alot of money, but as my father always told us, "How do you eat an elephant?  A bite at a time!"

So together, let's do this...a little bit at a time, let's help Adam GET HIS SMILE BACK!!!