A family is pleading for help to save the life of Ryan Becker, who is fighting an extremely rare and devastating illness known as Pyoderma Gangrenosum, a condition described by doctors as one of the most painful known to medicine. 

Becker, a husband and father of a baby boy, is the first known person diagnosed with all three subtypes of the disease. For months, an experimental medication has kept him alive, but the clinical trial that provided it is losing its funding, leaving him without access to the life-sustaining treatment. 

Each injection costs more than $11,000, and Becker requires two per month. The cost is not covered by insurance, and all appeals, compassionate-use requests and patient assistance programs have been denied. 

His family says they have exhausted every option — contacting lawmakers, drug manufacturers and journalists — and are now turning to the public for help to raise $400,000 to continue his treatment long enough for doctors to pursue a final, experimental path that may save his life. 

“Ryan has already taken his last dose,” wrote Marty Becker, his father-in-law, in a public Facebook post. “Without the medication, he will die. Please don’t let this be how his story ends.” 

Ryan Becker and his wife, Mikkel, said they are determined to fight the disease but need the community’s help to make that happen. To shed light on what he goes through, Mikkel recently shared a post from her husband about the agony he endures daily because of the disease. "From the start, we have been completely transparent about everything,” he wrote in a post shared by Mikkel Becker. “I wanted people to see the truth of what this disease does.” 

“Imagine if you were so desperate to see your kids grow up that you need to show millions of people every square inch of your body after being confined to a hospital bed and on corticosteroids for months. Imagine the worst pain you have ever felt and then think of it being agonizingly worse, all over your body, and constant. Then imagine that you had people constantly telling you that you are causing the pain yourself, that you are just trying to get drugs, or that God is punishing you. Imagine people spending money to gloat at pain and tell you they were happy you were suffering. And then realize that the nightmare you are imagining is real. That is my reality and it is what I have lived with for the past 10 months.” 

Despite unrelenting pain, he wrote that he still has hope and gratitude, saying he still believes in miracles.  

Donations can be made through the family’s fundraising page at ryanandkel.com/donate or directly on GoFundMe under “Help Save Ryan Becker’s Life.”