Hattiesburg, Miss. – A teenager in Mississippi is living with a disease so rare that less than 20 people worldwide have ever been diagnosed with it.
Symptoms for 16-year-old Trey Garczynski started when he was 11 years old.
“I was just walking around, but just a few minutes later, my hearing just went black,” Garczynski said. “A minute later, it came back just for one second, and then it went out again. And when I came home, I couldn’t hear anything.”
His parents started looking for a cause and found something none of them expected.
Trey Garczynski was diagnosed with Mitchell Syndrome, a neurological disease. It can affect the patient’s hearing, eyesight, digestive system and movement.
“At the time when the neurologist told us, told us there were only two people in the world,” said Meredith Garczynski, Trey’s mother. “We know, as of today, there have been 17 cases; six have passed away.”
The teen and his family didn’t let the diagnosis get them down. He said he thinks positively daily and looks forward to the future without getting stuck in the past.
The Garczynski family has connected with other families going through the same thing – only 11 people are left in the world with Mitchell Syndrome.