“I feel like camp made me much more hopeful and accepting of life.”
Adam was born with multiple serious heart conditions, including hypoplasia of the aorta, described in medical literature as an exceedingly rare, and Ebstein’s anomaly, which occurs in less than 1% of all congenital heart disease cases. Within days of his birth, he had open heart surgery and spent his first six months of life in intensive care. And, growing up, the weight of his conditions followed him.
He lived with chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety about his health … and surgery scars that drew stares and questions he never quite knew how to answer. Adam described himself as a shy kid who felt like an outsider, different from everyone around him in ways that were hard to explain and impossible to hide.
Then he came to Over The Wall Camp, the SeriousFun camp in the United Kingdom.
For Adam, that week at camp changed everything.
“During camp I felt free to be who I wanted to be and not worry,” he says. “I could just focus on making friends and having fun.”
That freedom didn’t end when camp did. Adam came home with something he hadn’t had before: belonging and hope. He left camp seeing himself and his future differently— determined to give that same feeling to someone else.
He learned to navigate hospital appointments on his own. He started making his own medical decisions. He became more accepting of his condition.
And those scars that once made him so self conscious? Adam loves them now. They’re part of who he is, and he’s proud of that.
Today, Adam volunteers at camp, showing up for kids who are right where he once was. He brings the joy camp gave him and hands it forward, one week at a time.
He says that camp reminds him “that there is always sun after it rains.”
That’s what happens when a child living with a rare condition finds a place that sees them, not their diagnosis.
Camp changes everything.