WHITESTOWN, Ind. -- Two Whitestown brothers are taking a special journey together – sharing a passion for racecars, and also a rare disease with no cure.
Isaac and Eli Fox were born just three years apart, and they both share the need for speed. But every day off the track, the brothers have a different race to worry about.
"We have ARPKD," the brothers explained. "My kidneys have cysts on them. My liver is shutting down, or eventually will, and so is my spleen. They are both enlarged."
The boys have autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease – a rare genetic disorder found in one-in-20,000 children. The Fox family has two of the 12 children in Indiana with the disease.
For now, with no cure, the Fox brothers go day-by-day with the knowledge that their clock is ticking faster than most.
"The way we let them live their lives with racing and being in athletics as much as they are able to," said the boys' father Jamie. "Because we always know that the day is coming that they will have to have transplants, that they are not necessarily going to take a turn for the worst, but it will get much harder before they get better."
The brothers are both on the two-year track for transplants for their kidneys and livers. Their spleens will have to be removed too.
This weekend, the Fox family will be participating in the Indianapolis Walk for PKD. Their team has so fair raised nearly $1,000.
Click here to learn more about the Indianapolis Walk for PKD, or here to learn more about the disease itself.
