Thank you for visiting Brothers on a Quest. To donate to a specific fund toward the research for our type of Ataxia, AOA2, please visit the following link.
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“We Are Strong” Trailer
Watch the 2:12 minute trailer for our film, “We Are Strong.”
“We Are Strong” Full Film
Watch the entire 18:21 minute film “We Are Strong.”
On Saturday, February 22nd over 200 people from all backgrounds, all ages and all fitness levels gathered together at No Limit Personal Training in Placentia, CA to participate in our 9th Row-A-Thon. ABC Hopes teamed up with Brothers On A Quest to raise funds and awareness for both organizations. 16 teams rowed their hearts out for 42,195 meters, a full marathon, on a Concept 2 rowing machine. Together we raised just over $6,000. Many thanks to all who supported, rowed and attended the amazing event!
Have you added a charity with Amazon Smile?
At no charge to you, Amazon lets you pick a charity of your choosing, when you shop at smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate to your favorite charitable organization, at no cost to you! Please help out our organization and choose us! Simply search for “Brothers On A Quest, Placentia” to select us as your charity. Click here to Get Started.
What an incredible honor to receive a $30,000 check for Brother’s On A Quest from the Walter Benak Trust and a $30,000 matching gift. So if, you want to help the boys fight Ataxia and couldn’t make the film premiere we have til the end of the year to raise dollar for dollar this gift! Thank you Frank Fiorito for making this possible! Click here to donate to AOA2 research today to help us reach our goal.
To donate to a specific fund toward the research for our type of Ataxia, AOA2, please visit the following link.
About Us
Learn Our Story
Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 2 (AOA2) is a rare neurological disease. For families, such as ours, who are affected by it, life is never the same. Unfortunately, AOA2 tends to begin in late adolescence, leaving patients unable to drive, walk, write, and handle their own basic daily needs. Common symptoms of AOA2 include balance problems, tremors, loss of motor skills, double vision, and muscle weakness. This site is dedicated to sharing our story and raise awareness about AOA2. Although we must use a wheelchair and AOA2 has robbed us of the ability to live independently, we remain optimistic about the future, thanks to UCLA’s Brent Fogel, M.D., Ph.D. who is determined to find a cure for AOA2. He is one of a handful of investigators specifically researching AOA2.
We Are Strong, a documentary about our story, premiered November 2nd, 2018. Please click here to see the trailer.
For more information about our story please click to see an article from The Orange County Register.
What is Ataxia?
There are many types
The word “ataxia”, comes from the Greek word, “a taxis” meaning “without order or incoordination”. The word ataxia means without coordination. People with ataxia have problems with coordination because parts of the nervous system that control movement and balance are affected. Ataxia may affect the fingers, hands, arms, legs, body, speech, and eye movements. The word ataxia is often used to describe a symptom of incoordination which can be associated with infections, injuries, other diseases, or degenerative changes in the central nervous system. Ataxia is also used to denote a group of specific degenerative diseases of the nervous system called the hereditary and sporadic ataxias.
Diagnosis is based on a person’s medical history, family history, and a complete neurological evaluation including an MRI scan of the brain. Various blood tests may be performed to rule out other possible disorders which may present similar symptoms. Genetic blood tests are now available for some types of hereditary ataxia to confirm a diagnosis or as a predictive test to determine if someone has inherited an ataxia gene known to affect other family members.
The hereditary ataxias are genetic, which means they are caused by a defect in a certain gene that is present from the start of a person’s life. All of us have genes that have little mistakes or variations but most of these do not cause disease, they are called mutations. The hereditary ataxias can be divided into those that are dominantly inherited and those that are recessively inherited.
Autosomal recessive inherited diseases also affect males and females equally but it takes a “double dose” of the ataxia gene to result in disease symptoms. Both parents must be carriers of the disease gene and each must pass on the ataxia gene to their child for the double dose that is needed to produce symptoms of the recessive disease. Each child of parents who are carriers of a recessive disease has a 25% chance of inheriting two ataxia genes so will develop the disease, a 50% chance of inheriting just one of the ataxia genes and, therefore, be a carrier and a 25% chance of inheriting no ataxia gene and be completely free of ataxia. Because a single recessive ataxia gene does not cause symptoms, it can be passed on in a family for generations without being recognized. Therefore, there is often no “family history” of ataxia if the disease is inherited as a recessive gene.
Featured Videos
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Angels Weekly: The DeMint family meets Mike Trout
Featured on Angels Weekly, watch as the DeMint Family and the Brothers on a Quest get a very special visit while visiting the Angels’ locker room. This is an experience the DeMint family will never forget.
FOX Sports West, Kings Weekly: Random Acts of Kindness
To view a video about our story featured on Kings Weekly’s Random Act of Kindness as shown on FOX Sports West, please click below to watch. The video features our parents, Cindy and Jerry DeMint, and the Los Angles Kings. We can’t thank FOX Sports West and the Los Angels Kings enough for this incredible experience.
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Another proud supporter of Ataxia research is 2016 NASCAR Track/California State Rookie-of-the-Year, and up-and-coming NASCAR driver, Dylan Garner.