A boy living in Victorville, California, recently had to change his focus from attending Victor Valley High School and playing football and basketball to receiving treatments for his newly developed aplastic anemia.

Ryan Acevedo Jr., was reportedly diagnosed with aplastic anemia on July 25, just weeks before he was to start school at Victor Valley as a freshman. Aplastic anemia is a condition that causes bone marrow to stop producing enough new blood cells in order to ward off infection and carry enough oxygen from the lungs into other parts of the body.

Aplastic Anemia Details

Although the condition is rare, Ryan is one of less than 1,000 people diagnosed with aplastic anemia in the U.S. yearly, it still can be a life altering one since the exact causes of the illness aren’t always known.

“He has days where he talks about not wanting to live,” explains his mother, Pearl Osuna, 31. But she tells him, “That’s not going to happen.”

Ryan is currently being treated at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County for blood and platelet transfusions. Since his diagnosis, he’s been hospitalized five times due to complications or for other procedures, including one session of chemotherapy, which is a common treatment for aplastic anemia.

Doctors say that they don’t believe Ryan always has a realistic grasp of what he is facing and simply states: “It sucks.” Though he does always have a positive attitude and remains mentally strong. Staying strong is something doctors say is important in these circumstances considering Ryan has already gained 30 pounds from taking steroids for the condition. And when he tries to play sports he can only last a few minutes before he has to return home due to the lack of oxygen being carried through his body by his red blood cells. He has also been home schooled since discovering his condition.

However, Ryan and his family will not give up and are now in the process of feverishly looking for the right donor match for Ryan to receive a bone marrow transplant.

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