Rare Disease Stories

Meet Oliver! A vibrant young boy with autoinflammatory disease living in Williams Lake, BC! Oliver has always been the type of child that brings joy to everyone around him. We couldn’t go to the grocery store without the smiling baby drawing everyone near. His first year of life was good.…

Show your colours for #RareDiseaseDay “We’ve had dark moments and failed medications. We recognize how much harder our son has to work when he is flaring just to do normal things, like walk up the stairs, go to school, be with his friends.” -Parent, Sara Ethier on her son who…

Written by: Sara Ethier “I wrote this piece to share my son’s journey of living with a rare, one in a million Autoinflammatory Disease. Rare means that there is not a lot of research or treatment options available to children like my son who suffer. I appreciate the small steps…

Autoinflammatory vs Autoimmune Diseases Coined less than 20 years ago, the word autoinflammatory is often confused with autoimmune—so, what’s the difference? When we think of the word autoimmune, most people understand that it means your body is attacking itself the way it attacks invaders, like bacteria and viruses. These autoimmune responses…

I want to let you know why I am walking this Charity Challenge for Cassie and Friends.  “Autoimmunity is the system of immune responses of an organism against its own healthy cells and tissues. Any disease that results from such an aberrant immune response is termed an ‘autoimmune disease.’” My…