My Sick Brother

Mitchell Pasco was working two jobs and saving to buy a house when he was diagnosed with an extremely rare disease that has attacked his main heart artery. He's the fourth New Zealander to be diagnosed with the disease.

My older brother says he still feels "normal", despite being diagnosed with a rare and deadly auto-immune disease that nearly sent him into cardiac arrest.

In September Mitchell Pasco​,19, reluctantly agreed to see a doctor about strange bruises, chest pains and shortness of breath. Within hours he was in hospital fighting for his life.

Takayasu Arteritis is a disease my older brother Mitchell has with heart failure. It is a disease that if you were to get it the people that would get it would be Asian woman. My older brother is only 19 and has to have surgery on his heart because if he goes out and his heart stops he could die and at any moment. The reason he has to get surgery is so that he can get this thing in his heart that re-valve his heart back to beat again. If he goes to get this surgery he will have to get flown to Auckland as they would not be able to do the procedure in Christchurch. My brother said "I hated hospital. I felt like I was in jail because I couldn't leave the ward."  My brother had to have Chemotherapy because of the heart failure it has made him lose hair and made his face more chubby. Takayasu Arteritis is a rare form of vasculitis disease involving inflammation in the walls of the largest arteries in the body: the aorta and its main branches. The disease results from an attack by the body's own immune system, causing inflammation in the walls of arteries.