Baby With Rare Disease Can’t Be Touched by Mother
2-month-old Kiira Kinkle’s skin blisters at the touch
Two-month-old Kiira Kinkle’s little fingers and toes are bandaged every day. Her mother can’t touch her skin. And every night, her sisters pray her “owies” will go away. Kiira has the severest form of a rare disease called recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), which makes her skin so fragile it breaks or blisters at the slightest touch, KCRA reports. “This is the worst disease you’ve never heard of,” her mother, Kirsti, tells the station. Kiira was diagnosed just after she was born in October, after her parents saw blood on her skin, adds SF Gate. Only 200 children a year are born with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), but only one in a million have the recessive version. It keeps Kiira’s body from making collagen, needed to hold skin together.