“We cannot forget the stories of individuals who are no longer with us.”
Jeffrey Modell
Jeffrey, was born in 1970 . Jeffrey’s first ten months were peaceful and happy. He plunged into life with joy and quickly developed the cheerful, outgoing personality that everyone remembers about him.But then things started to go very, very wrong. Just before his first birthday, Jeffrey developed a hepatitis-like condition and was hospitalized with high fevers, jaundice, and an enlarged spleen. The doctors ordered extensive tests. There was an unbearable wait, and then the diagnosis, hypogammaglobulinemia.Jeffrey had the recurring infections typical of Primary Immunodeficiency. Every succeeding illness disrupted his young life. At three or four years of age, Jeffrey had to endure painful, intramuscular injections of gamma globulin given with huge needles that left him sore for days. By the time he was ten or eleven, he was started on intravenous gamma globulin. Through it all, Jeffrey managed to thrive. He reached normal height and weight and kept up in school, camp, and sports. But throughout the years, Jeffrey’s problems never went away.Courage and humor were Jeffrey’s great assets. His determination was inspiring. One day, without warning, he developed hepatitis, and a few months later, pneumocystis pneumonia. He had two more life-threatening bouts with pneumocystis, and the third one, sadly, took his precious life in 1986.
Throughout his life, Jeffrey would say “Do Something! Jeffrey never knew how he would change his parents lives forever, and the lives of so many thousands of children he would never meet. But in the spirit of his optimism and courage, his parents created the Jeffrey Modell Foundation - not in memory of his death, but in celebration of his life, and to give life.