There's No one quite like Noah.

Thank you for visiting this page. My name is Joe and along with Lauren, we are the parents of an amazing 13 year old named Noah. For the first 12 years of his life he lived a normal life, liked video games, collected pokemon cards, enjoyed school and music. He was an honor roll student at Jefferson Middle School and played on the middle school basketball team. On May 6th his life changed. He was on a reward trip with fellow students for a fundraiser to Culver's when he started acting funny, forgetting things staring into space with no response. When they got back to school he stood there not moving just staring at the ceiling for several minutes before throwing up and passing out. He was rushed to the emergency room at summit in oconomowoc, before being transported to childens in milwaukee. From that point forward, his health has just spiraled. He was in the hospital originally for 2 weeks and was released with the diagnosis of encephalitis, a lesion on the brain. Was giving some donor blood to help it. The hopes were it would go away. After he was released, he followed up with his primary 2 days later who ran labs and he had an alarmingly high blood sugar. He was re-admitted to children's and diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Things were back to as close to normal as they could be, for a little bit. However, a specialist in rare diseases ran more labs and sent them to Mayo and he was diagnosed with MOG https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/mog-antibody-disease/ Last week on 7/25 Noah had a severe seizure and was sent again to children's ER. He was giving Keppra (anti seizure meds) and sent home. Noah was complaining of vision issues since the seizure, seeing a blurry line and cant see anything above it. We had a follow up with neuro who did an EEG and ruled out Epilepsy, but said Noah needed to get an eye exam asap for the vision issues as one of the most severe side effects of MOG is vision problems called optic neuritis. Swelling of the optic nerve that causes multiple problems with vision, including blindness. Sure enough the eye exam on 8/2 showed he had severe optic neuritis. His neuro Dr called a couple hours after the exam and said he needs to come get admitted right away. We need to get a new MRI of the brain and eyes, we need to start the donor IVIG treatment immediately to stop the progression. So after 12 years of normal life, normal health , this poor child has been giving diagnoses of MOG Encephalitis , Type 1 Diabetes and Optic Neuritis the span of 3 months. The appointments are going to be never ending for him. The medications will be constant, the donor treatment will need to be constantly done each month from now on. His life will not be normal anymore. He may not even be able to go back to school, that's still in question. He is on Keppra for his seizure meds twice daily, Humalog for his blood sugars, Lantus at night to balance his blood sugars while sleeping, Diazapam in case of seizure (MOG related) , Glucogan in case of seizure (Diabetes related). He has specialists in neuro, opthamology, endocrine, primary, and psychiatry. Follow ups and tests will continue to happen regularly. He has to be supervised because anything can happen at any time.

We are kindly asking if you can participate and/or share the link we would greatly greatly appreciate all the support we can get. If you would like to help in other forms or through other platforms, such as giftcards for gas for to and from Dr's appointments, or fast food for when we are at the hospital doing the ivig which takes 4-6 hours and Noah wants Subway (his favorite) if you want to donate, but don't want to put account info on here, Lauren and myself have other platforms as well. Or mail a check, I can provide address to send it to. Feel free to message me on Facebook

I know this saying is normally for the birth of a child but I feel it applies here too. It takes a village. Well we need a village, and I know there is a village of friends and family and others reading this that know and love Noah and know this couldn't have happened to a sweeter more courteous kid. Please continue to support and share his story. Thank you all again

From the bottom of our hearts

Joe and Lauren