A 6-year-old boy suffers from a rare bone condition that has left him with more than 500 fractures already in his short life.
According to the Daily Mail , Reiko Quinlan suffers from Osteogeneses Imperfecta Type Three which is also known as the Brittle Bone Disease.
The agonizing condition left little Reiko with five fractures on the day he was born and 80 bone breaks before he was 1-year-old.
Osteogeneses Imperfecta Type Three has stunted Reiko’s growth with the six-year-old bearing semblance to a 2-year-old child.
In addition, Reiko is unable to walk without assistance. He is confined to a wheelchair because of the extreme fragility of his thighbones which have fractured over 100 times.
Reiko’s condition is so heartbreaking that his other siblings cannot hug him out of fear of breaking his bones.
According to his mother, Jessica Quinlan, 31, Reiko, on one occasion put his arm around his brother’s back and fractured it. Another time he fractured another arm, when he turned to smile at his mother.
Despite his challenges, Jessica Quinlan revealed that her young son remained upbeat about life, adding that Reiko was an intelligent child with an incisive memory who had no problem making friends.
However, Quinlan fears for her son’s future, pointing out that she is consistently worrying about how long Reiko has to live because the condition saps so much out of his young body.
The Toronto mother speaking to Press Reader revealed that the family stopped counting Reiko’s bone breaks when they reached 300, adding that she was very sure his fractures had zipped past the 500 mark .
The 31-year-old added that Reiko wanted to live the life of a normal kid so badly to the point that he sometimes hid his fractures from her.
Ms. Quinlan pointed out that some of Reiko’s bone breaks have been discovered during his routine X-ray checks, weeks after they happened. The receptionist said her young son would simply tell her he did not notice a bone was broken or that it did not bother him.
The mother noted that a slew of the injuries occurred while Reiko was in school and suspected that he was trying to protect his classmates from being scolded when he concealed the fractures.
Reiko has had 11 surgeries to correct his broken bones. His mother revealed that the six-year-old has also had metal rods inserted in his arms and legs to minimize the fractures.
Reiko Quinlan received the news that he and his family are heading to Disney World. http://t.co/RkKnJhG5aM pic.twitter.com/Pf1wAiOlTq
— Goderich Signal Star (@GoderichSStar) October 4, 2015
Ms. Quinlan maintains a glimmer of hope that her son’s injuries will whittle down as he gets older.
According to her, Reiko had endured numerous injuries from doing absolutely nothing. Other times, he had crashed into objects without any injury.
“He’ll fracture a bone while sitting still on the couch, but then he’ll bang his legs into a wall and nothing will happen…he is definitely fracturing less as he gets older.”
The Brittle Bone Disease affects one in every 20,000 people.
Dr. Francis Glorieux of the Osteogeneses Imperfecta Foundation revealed that it is caused by an abnormality in the collagen of the bone.
“The collagen keeps the bone hard so that it can function properly. When the anomality is present, it causes the bones to become brittle.”