Eli is the sweetest little boy with the biggest heart. He loves soccer, the color blue, Bluey, being silly with his brother, and talking about Jesus. He is bright, loving, funny, sensitive, and deeply compassionate. When people meet him, they see his smile first — but behind that smile is a little boy who fights battles every single day that most people cannot see.

As a baby and toddler, Eli was playful, curious, affectionate, and full of life. During pregnancy and delivery, there were complications, including significant placental clotting findings, severe neonatal hypoglycemia, and a true knot in his umbilical cord, but we never imagined how much his life would later change.

As he grew older, subtle symptoms slowly began appearing and eventually became impossible to ignore. After illnesses and medical stressors, Eli began struggling with worsening neurological, autonomic, gastrointestinal, feeding, and developmental symptoms that gradually changed daily life for our entire family.

Over time, he developed severe reflux and gastrointestinal dysmotility, feeding and swallowing difficulties, fluctuating muscle tone and coordination issues, nervous system dysregulation, fatigue, autonomic symptoms, sensory struggles, and episodes where even normal childhood activities became exhausting for him. Some days he can laugh, play, and seem almost like himself again. Other days his body becomes overwhelmed by stress, illness, eating, or exertion, and even basic activities become difficult.

We have spent years traveling to specialists, completing extensive testing, therapies, imaging, and evaluations while trying to understand what is happening inside our son’s body. Along the way, testing began showing evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction and severe oxidative stress, affecting the way his body produces and uses energy. In simple terms, Eli’s body often struggles to keep up with the energy demands needed for regulation, digestion, movement, healing, and daily function.

At the same time, we have also seen encouraging signs that his body can respond and improve with supportive therapies and interventions. Those moments — the days where he has more energy, more comfort, more engagement, more life in his eyes — are what continue to give us hope and keep us fighting for him.

After extensive research and consultation, we are preparing to travel to pursue specialized evidence-based minimally invasive regenerative treatment options not widely available to us locally for healing and recovery of his neurons and immune system. Our hope is simply to continue exploring every possible opportunity that may help improve Eli’s comfort, brain, immune, and mitochondrial healing, regulation, function, and quality of life.

The costs for treatment, travel, lodging, transportation, follow-up care, and supportive therapies are significant for our family, and we cannot do this alone.

If you feel led to support Eli through prayer, sharing, or donation, we are deeply grateful. Every act of kindness helps carry our family through this journey and helps give our little boy another chance to keep fighting toward healing and hope.

Thank you for loving Eli with us.

“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. Look, I will heal you.” — 2 Kings 20:5 CSB

There have been countless nights spent praying over Eli, asking God to strengthen his little body and guide us toward the right answers. This journey has been filled with scary moments, exhaustion, tears, and uncertainty — but also moments of hope that remind us to keep believing.

There were seasons where Eli struggled so severely with eating, pain, reflux, nervous system dysregulation, and exhaustion that even simple childhood activities became difficult for him. Watching your child lose pieces of comfort, energy, and function is something impossible to fully describe. But over time, through supportive therapies, interventions, and relentless advocacy, we have also seen beautiful moments of progress and healing.

We have watched Eli regain strength in areas we once feared were slipping away. We have seen more engagement, more laughter, more connection, more endurance, and glimpses of the joyful little boy we know so well. Every small victory — a better day, more energy, more comfort, more ability to play and participate — has reminded us that his body is still fighting and still capable of improvement.

This is why we continue searching, continue advocating, and continue believing there is more healing ahead for our sweet boy. We truly believe God has carried Eli this far already, and we continue praying for what is still to come. If you’ve made it this far (I know this was long), we just want to thank you again from the bottom of our hearts!