Nate (William Nathan) was born prematurely, and his lungs were underdeveloped. He was unable to breathe on his own for the first weeks of his life. During the first year, Nate had 19 hospital admissions for Respiratory Distress Syndrome. At eight months old, he had his first bronchoscopy and endoscopy. They revealed that he had been suffering since birth from severe GERD (reflux), aspiration pneumonia and severe esophagitis (red, bleeding, inflamed esophagus).

Nate had a Nissen Fundoplication when he was less than a year old. This is a surgical procedure to wrap the stomach around the esophagus to form a pouch so nothing can leave the stomach and go up into the throat. This helped for a few weeks, but then he began gagging and retching. He got frequent cases of hives, wheezing, and chronic ear and sinus infections. This, his family learned, was from allergic reactions to milk, eggs, soy, and about 20 foods.

At 16 months old, Nate started on an amino acid based formula and he's still bottle fed at three years old. In October of 2003, he was diagnosed with a rare auto immune disease known as Eosinophilic Enteropathy as well as Asperger's Disease (autism) and Hyperlordosis. A feeding tube into his stomach seems unavoidable in the future. He also suffers a lot of back, leg, and hip pain.

Nate will have his 29th surgery this month.

His speech is very delayed, he needs braces on his legs, and he has developmental delays.

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