Familial Dysautonomia (FD) is a fatal neurological degenerative genetic disease that attacks the  autonomic nervous system of children from birth and causes severe retching, painful headaches, oxygen  deprivation, inability to eat orally (nearly all must have feedings through stomach tubes), dangerous  fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate, and much more.  FD affects many hundreds of children  who remain intellectually bright while becoming increasingly physically disabled.  Sixty percent of these  children die before they reach their eighteenth birthday.

This poem was written by a boy with FD