Twin brothers Neil and Adam Pearson suffer from a rare disease — neurofibromatosis type 1. If that sounds bad, it’s because it is. If you put Adam and his brother in one room next to each other, you would not believe how different they are, much less think of them as twins.
This rare disease, affecting 1/3000 people, is almost impossible to predict. Adam’s first signs of the illness began to appear when he was just five. That’s when his face started to swell and got all bumpy because of the type one neurofibromatosis that manifested itself as non-malignant tumors.
Even after undergoing over thirty surgeries to remove the benign growths, Adam still ended up with his left eye not working and continued to lose sight in the right one. And to think that it all started with a small little bump on his head. Needless to say, Adam’s childhood was not easy. The doctors had to deal with a tumor on his neck, which could lead to terrible consequences as it was blocking the boy’s trachea. That was Adam’s first serious surgery. Out of thirty. The sheer amount of time he spent in the ICU was astonishing.
