Emmanuel Alvarez was given little chance of survival at birth.
One week, two. A month.
Since then, he has undergone about 40 surgeries.
He's down to one kidney and had his gall bladder removed. He's had pancreatitis, endocarditis, arthritis and collapsed lungs.
He lives with developmental delays and hearing loss.
And a strong spirit.
"This guy wants to live," said María Alvarez, his mother. "He has lots of love."
"It's always been his family," said Dina Louie, a nurse at UC Davis Medical Center. "They've always been so supportive and helpful with him."
"Mi amor para ti, amor a todas horas," reads a picture prominent in the Alvarez home in Oroville. "My love for you is love at any time."
Manny, as his family calls him, is now 23 years old.
He is friendly and communicative when well, though his weak immune system means he often comes down to the medical center in Sacramento for treatment.
Armed with a vocabulary of signs for words and names, he communicates well with his family and expresses even more when he has access to his DynaVox, a programmable device that speaks his thoughts when he pushes buttons on a screen.
YouTube shows and computer games keep him busy at home, where he spends most days in his mother's care.
Arthritis hobbles him, and even when he walks around the house, he is often in pain.
Going outside to the garden is more difficult. Since his collapsed lung, he has trouble walking up the hill.
Outside the home, family members push him in an old wheelchair – the same one they got 10 or 12 years ago.
The chair is worn and hard to push on the gravel outside.
Manny stays home when his mother goes to the grocery store, since she can't push both cart and wheelchair.
When the family takes a mall trip, he'll often be left sitting with Vicente Alvarez, his father, while the women go from store to store.
The solution, the family thinks, would be a motorized wheelchair that Manny could drive himself.
Even if that means he tries to go his own way on shopping trips, it's better than making him sit in the mall while his mother and sisters go in the stores, said María Alvarez.
"We think," she said, "for him, having a motorized wheelchair will give him freedom, more independence."
Needed: New custom motorized wheelchair
Total: $4,000
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