SPOKANE, Wash. — 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…