Thanks to one doctor's outside the box thinking an 8-year-old boy from Chateauguay can live his life with more confidence and diminished anxiety but more importantly less pain.
Evan Prescott was born with epidermolysis bullosa, a rare genetic abnormality that causes the skin to blister easily.
"His hands, his fingers had to be individually wrapped-his toes, everything had to be separated," Yandy Macabuag, Evan's mother told CTV Montreal.
The first six months of Evan's life were spent swaddled in bandages.
The condition can be especially fatal for children during their first year of life due to the blisters high risk of infection.
Evan spent months in the hospital where a specialized team would administer his skincare needs, the entire time his parents too afraid to touch him.
Now for the past several years Yandy has had to take over the twice daily inspection.
"He's lying down and basically we check him for blisters, and any blisters that he has, we have to lance," Macabuag explained. "We pop them with a sterile needle that we have a prescription for, and we drain them."
The entire process is still very painful for Evan.
"As a parent, it's horrible, because you're told that you're doing this to help your child-- and you feel like this monster who's attacking them," she said.
After going through just about every treatment possible, Dr. Pablo Ingelmo at the Montreal Children's Hospital refused to give up and decided to think outside the box.
"You see suffering in the face of the kid who cannot walk, and you see suffering in the face of the mother that has to inflict pain," he said.
Dr. Ingelmo and his team of chronic pain specialists decided to try laughing gas. The team found the nitrous oxide was fast acting enough to relieve the pain and had no lingering effects making it perfect for a young child like Evan.
and came up with a novel ideal for treatment: nitrous oxide, better known to some as "laughing gas."
It responded to the family's needs, it was fast-acting, with no lingering side effects - perfect for a young, developing child like Evan, doctors concluded.
"It lifted a lot of pressure, right - my son doesn't have to have tears to do this," Macabuag said, calling the results life changing.
Evan still gets around the house the majority of the time on his knees in order to avoid excessive pain, but he's been able to do more than his mother ever thought possible, including taking part in and winning two 50-metre running races.
Evan and his family are now the first in the world to be trained to use nitrous oxide at home.