Lil' Cal

The past couple of months or so, I keep hearing about baby Callum, a child who was sick, both parents are musicians, pay for their own insurance and can't afford treatment for the little guy so the indy community has rallied around Callum. For some reason, when I saw articles or blog posts about the little guy, I just thought..that's sad and skipped through the article. Yesterday I saw another article about Callum and finally checked it out today. I had no idea they were just up in Baltimore and somehow makes this story a little personal (even though there's more than eight million people in the DC/Baltimore region). Now, I'm on board and even though I can only do very little for the family, I thought I might as well share his story on here.

Callum is 18 months old next week and has SMA or Spinal Muscular Atrophy which is a neurological disease that affects muscles throughout the body, although the muscles closest to the trunk of one’s body are often most severely affected. Weakness in the legs is generally greater than in the arms. Sometimes feeding and swallowing can be affected. Involvement of respiratory muscles (muscles involved in breathing and coughing) can lead to an increased tendency for pneumonia and other lung problems. Intellectual activity is normal and it is often observed that patients with SMA are unusually bright and sociable. There's four types of SMA-He was diagnosed with the most severe, type 1 SMA--95% of babies diagnosed with Type 1 SMA don't survive to their first birthday.

Anyway, Callum's parents have a blog which they've only written a few times but its worth a read. Here's the NPR article which is a concise summary of what's going on.