Five-year-old Kolkata boy with rare disease can see, feel things normally, but can't breathe without ventilator

KOLKATA: A five-year-old Kolkata boy has been diagnosed with scrub typhus, a rare condition that has made it impossible for him to breathe without a ventilator despite being able to see, feel and respond to everything around him normally.
Doctors think young Zishan has little chance of surviving, but his parents - one of whom is a wage labourer - are not giving up on him even though they find it difficult to pay his medical bills.
In October last year, Zishan was initially diagnosed with high fever, but his condition deteriorated. Later that month, he was admitted to the Institute of Child Health in Kolkata, where doctors said he had scrub typhus.
Zishan suffers respiratory troubles because the disease has stopped a part of his brain from functioning. He has been on ventilation for two months now, and doctors say that if he's taken off it, he'll die.
Zishan's father, Mohammed Mehmood Alam, used to work in a leather factory in Bantala, Kolkata.
Neither he nor Zishan's mother want to accept that their son doesn't have very long to live. But Mehmood Alam says it's very difficult for him to keep paying for his son's treatment.
So far, his family has only been able to pay off Rs 1 lakh 75 thousand of the the Rs 4 lakh that the treatment costs.
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Content courtesy: Ei Samay