Vinny Cagnoni, a 7-year-old from Brighton, spent a year-and-a-half in the hospital after a respiratory infection he contracted in 2020 caused his antibodies to go into overdrive, leading him to become paralyzed from the neck down.
When he left, he could only say four words and needed a ventilator. Since then, he’s worked hard through physical, occupational and respiratory therapy to regain his speech and strength, with the ventilator removed in October. But because his respiratory system was affected, he still ends up in the hospital multiple times a year with colds and other respiratory infections.