A 15-year veteran of the Phoenix police force is in desperate need of help.
“I will do anything to have him with us,” Debbie Denham, the officer's wife, said.
Officer Benjamin Denham loves what he does.
“I really enjoy police work," he said. "It’s always been a passion."
But for the last five years, Officer Denham has lived with an invisible disease. It's an autoimmune disease called systemic sclerosis, which is a rare form of scleroderma.
It is incurable and it essentially attacks a person's internal organs, but Denham has always been able to get by.
“I made changes and I have overcome those obstacles,” he said.
Those changes allowed him to continue to get the bad guys off Valley streets. But all that changed a few months ago.
“To see him not be able to do that breaks my heart,” his wife said.
“I started to lose weight, and I was growing weaker by the day,” the officer said.
Doctors then diagnosed him with a new disease: Polymyositis. It attacks the muscles, and it caused him a three week stay in the hospital.
“The hardest part is knowing he is in so much pain, and you can't do anything about it,” his wife said.
While there’s no cure for his new diagnosis either, he must have life long treatment, done every month, in order to continue being there for his wife and four children.
Denham says his first round was a success.
“I contribute that treatment to me being able to talk to you," he said. "Because last week I had no voice and three weeks ago I was knocking on deaths door.”
To learn more about both diseases and to help with Officer Denham's medical bills head over to his GoFundMe page and his Facebook page.
