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My 6-year-old son, Cayden, loves to spend time outdoors, especially at the new accessible park in our town. He also likes to blow bubbles, paint rocks, and throw a ball. He basically enjoys everything that most children his age like to do. Cayden has never been able to walk…

A few days ago, my 6-year-old son, Cayden, woke us up with quite a surprise. We were getting everything ready for his biweekly enzyme replacement infusion, the treatment for his infantile-onset Pompe disease. When I woke up Cayden that morning to get him prepared for the day…

Last week was a busy one for our family. In addition to delivering a talk about Pompe disease to my son Cayden’s kindergarten class, we also celebrated his sixth birthday. The week was filled with fun and joy as Cayden was able to celebrate another year of life.

It seems like just the other day when I was sitting in the waiting room at the UCI Health ALS and Neuromuscular Center in Orange, California. I was meeting with a neuromuscular specialist for the first time to receive my diagnosis of late-onset Pompe disease. I will…

My 6-year-old son, Cayden, and I plan to put together a small presentation about his infantile-onset Pompe disease for his kindergarten class later this week, in recognition of Rare Disease Day on Feb. 29. Unfortunately, he’ll have to miss school that day because he’s scheduled to get his…

Philips, a company that manufactures and sells respiratory equipment to a big portion of the United States, recently posted a statement saying it was discontinuing “the sale of hospital ventilation products, certain home ventilation products, portable and stationary oxygen concentrators, and sleep diagnostic products.” This change was a shock…

Have you missed me since October? Did you wonder if something Pompe-related had happened to me? Did I get lost “on the road to Pompe,” or did my engine break down somewhere? Truth be told, I got lost in a bank of fog and didn’t know when it…

Last week, my 5-year-old son, Cayden, and I spent a few hours preparing for his Valentine’s Day celebration at school. He’s in kindergarten, so it’s the first year that we got to make Valentine’s Day cards for his class. We even took it a step further and filled goody…

This school year is the first for my 5-year-old son, Cayden. He attended preschool when he was younger, but now he’s in kindergarten at a public school, where things work a little differently. One of the biggest of those differences is transportation. For preschool, parents were required to…

My 5-year-old son, Cayden, has been seeing an otolaryngologist, an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist, for years. The first visit was suggested by his metabolic doctors, the ones who manage his infantile-onset Pompe disease. Pompe disease can lead to hearing loss, so they wanted to…