12 Years And Seven Feet Tall Already: He Just Can’t Stop Growing!

He was extraordinarily long at 2 months, had all his teeth at 4 months, looked like an 8 year old when he was actually four and an adult when he was only eight; this is Brenden Adams, twelve years old and a little more than seven feet tall, the boy who can’t stop growing!

Truly unique in itself, yet quite worrisome is the condition of this pre –teener, living in Ellensburg.

He is way too tall as compared to his friends, taller than his parents and teacher, taller than most doors in the school and around, too tall for his desk and even for his Mother’s SUV. And what’s worse? He’s still growing.

Born a normal baby of 7 ponds 3 ounces, there is nothing normal about Brenden anymore. Amidst coping with a team of specialised doctors, numerous medical visits, the huge joints, fatty tumours and the many extra teeth in his gums, already twelve out of which have been extracted, Brenden has been struggling to have a normal life and so are his parents.

"I still haven't seen anyone like Brenden," says Dr. Melissa Parisi, his geneticist at Children's Hospital in Seattle, who has been treating Brenden since he was four years old.

Worst still has been the condition of his parents ever since the extraordinary growth spurt of their son began, for no one had answers, to what they should expect and what was happening to their son.

Brenden's mom agreed, "That's the worst part…not knowing."

However, after eight long years of groping in the dark, trying to find an answer, some clue as to what caused Brenden’s unstoppable growth finally came the doctors’ way.

With the help of Brenden’s haematologists and oncologists, Parisi found out that Brenden’s chromosomes had been quite unusually rearranged. The condition called the inversion of chromosome – 12, had actually been the one affecting every single cell of the boy’s body since the beginning.
In our bodies, our genetic material, that is, the chromosomes are present in pairs. However, in Brenden’s body this was not the case. Not all his chromosomes were present in pairs. The 12th chromosomes in his body did not match.

Quite strangely, inexplicably and uniquely does a thing like this happen, where a piece of a chromosomal strand breaks off in the middle, flips around and then reattaches itself, quite innocently running havoc with some critical gene in the body – the growth gene in Brenden’s case.

"This gene is functioning despite the regulation that it shouldn't be," said Dr. Gad Kletter, Brenden's endocrinologist at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. "It's over-functioning. He was predicted to be over eight foot tall."

But a ray of hope is now seen, since the cause has been identified. The doctors plan to stop this endless phenomenon by inducing puberty in the boy. It would initially speed up his growth, but the testosterone shots would eventually signal his body to stop growing.

"We induced puberty," explained Kletter, "to fuse the bones and stop the growth." And so far, the idea seems to be working as it has stopped Brenden’s growth.

With friends who find him extremely caring, sensitive and nice as a person and a family that cares enough to tailor make a home especially for his convenience, Brenden who is the only one in this world suffering from this problem, wishes people to see him as-“just like everyone else”, even if his life isn’t.