A 10-Year-Old's Wish: "I Want to Be a Normal Kid"

A massive fundraising campaign has started in Brazil for 10-year-old Mateus Petter, who weighs 440 pounds and urgently needs gastric bypass surgery.

"We want our son to grow up normally. We want him to have a normal childhood," say Mateus' parents, who have become desperate about his health in recent years and are hoping the surgery will save his life.

"He was born a big baby. When he was just one month old, his doctors were shocked to find he weighed 15 pounds," recalls his mother, Gabriela. "And that was while he was only feeding on breast milk, before he started eating solid foods."

In an interview with the media, the parents revealed that by age two, when Mateus had reached an incredible 95 pounds, they realized it was time to act and began taking him for a series of medical tests to uncover the medical issue causing his dramatic weight gain at such a young age. 

Unfortunately, not a single doctor has been able to identify what condition Mateus suffers from. "We've spent 10 exhausting years trying to figure out what's wrong with our son," Gabriela explains. "We thought he had hormonal issues, so we took him to endocrinologists. We considered psychological problems, so we took him to psychotherapy. We thought he was simply overeating, so we enlisted nutritionists to change his diet—but they all said he doesn't suffer from poor dietary habits or binge eating.

"I've never seen him raid the fridge and eat everything in sight—yet there have been times he gained 15 pounds in a single week. It's absurd, and we're at a loss for what to do other than the gastric bypass surgery, which might restore his lost childhood."

"I want to be a normal kid," Mateus says with a heartwarming smile, insisting he eats just like other kids his age. "I might not get bullied at school, but it's still not pleasant to look this way. I want to look like everyone else," he explains.