When Brody Curtis was born a month ago, his mother says he looked like he had third degree burns.
He was born without skin on most of his body, a result of a rare spectrum of inherited skin disorders called epidermolysis bullosa, and he must be wrapped in bandages each day to keep infections at bay.
Brody also has blisters on his tongue and inside his moth because of the disease, which affects 1 in 20,000 children, according to the morning show, and doctors are unsure whether the boy's skin will grow.
"We do know that different forms can cause early death in life and it can cause skin cancer," his mum Heather Curtis, 33, from Charleston, Indiana, told Good Morning America. "Some people go on to be blind or have deformities in their bodies. But we just don't know."
Brody's parents, Heather and Chuck Curtis, as well as their daughter, Mckenna, five, are carriers of the disease, but do not have it, according to the show.
"EB group disorders are tremendously variable in their severity," said Dr Jouni Uitto, chair of the department of dermatology and cutaneous biology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. "In the most severe forms, children can die a couple of days or weeks after birth. The skin is not functioning. Or they have infections and eventually develop malnutrition and some form aggressive squamous cell cancer."
There is no treatment, the show reports, but bandages are used in an attempt to stop trauma and infections.
Brody's parents are trying to be positive.
"He doesn't show any pain until we do the bandage changes," says his mother Heather. "And he's gotten a lot better. All of his appendages are healed pretty good, except for his left leg. The skin is growing back and it scabs over and is not like an open wound anymore. ... We hope he'll be one of the lucky ones and still be active and play sports and grow up to be a normal kid."