IOWA CITY, Iowa — Hunter Mickelson’s parents knew their infant son wasn’t thriving, but local doctors couldn’t say why. A search for answers led them to University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
At just 6 months old, Hunter was diagnosed with an extremely rare condition called nephrogenic diabetes insipidus.
The genetic kidney disorder affects just 1 in 2.3 million people and can lead to severe dehydration if left untreated. The condition is unrelated to the more common diabetes, in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin.
“He was full term,” Hunter’s mother, Brooke, says of his birth. “He screamed all the time. He cried all the time. He couldn’t nurse. We couldn’t get him to latch.”
They visited nursing specialists, nutritionists, and other medical experts, but were told “you just got a colicky one.”
“We knew something was wrong,” John says. “We just didn’t know what it was.”
Read Hunter’s story here.