For the first two years of Joshua Jacob Gonzalez’s life, his parents, Javier and Jessica Gonzalez, suctioned saliva from the back of his mouth every five minutes. Miss one suction, his airways could clog—and he could die.
A few weeks after treatment, Jessica noticed something extraordinary. She jostled Javier, asleep in a hospital chair at the National Institutes of Health, awake. “When was the last time you suctioned JJ?” she asked. An hour had passed, they realized, and their son was breathing fine.
That moment marked the beginning of a bittersweet yet miraculous chapter for the Gonzalezes. The treatment that transformed Joshua’s life is now offering new hope to families grappling with rare diseases tied to a catastrophic 2018 event.
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