Group walks for boy with brain condition

Jeremy Keyser is quite the engineer. The 8-year-old transformed his living room into a droid factory.

Laid up in the hospital with a broken collar bone, that's when he discovered the Star Wars movies.

"I fell in love with C3PO and R2D2," Jeremy said joyfully.

Now, Anakin Skywalker's got nothing on him. All of Jeremy's robots are made of recycled boxes and construction paper. They have eyes, some have feet, and others have antennas.

But they all have shunts which are small tubes that drain fluid from their brain— just like the real shunt in Jeremy's brain.

It was a complication-free pregnancy for Jeremy's mother Paula. But soon after birth, doctors examined Jeremy's elongated head and diagnosed him with hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid collects on the brain.

The resulting pressure can slow development and potentially cause brain damage if not treated properly.

"It can be really a life or death situation if you don't act quickly," Paula Keyser told FOX 13.

That's why doctor's installed Jeremy's shunt which drains fluid from his brain and disperses it throughout his abdomen to be absorbed.

Jeremy looks and sounds great now, but that's not to say it's been an easy road. He's spent many hours on a treadmill learning to walk and with a therapist, learning how to use his hands.

Today, he has no trouble wielding his lightsaber. When asked what his Jedi name would be if he were a Jedi Jeremy yells, "Captain Nobo Vendi!"

And his successes are precisely why Jeremy's mom and dad established a local Hydrocephalus support group . They wanted to reach out to others going through the same struggles and found out there was nothing in Pinellas County.

But now their annual walks have grown year after year and this Saturday morning at Largo's Central Park, they're expecting their largest crowd yet with more than 200 walkers already registered.

"We feel blessed. There are so many kids that, that have multiple shunt revisions and, there's there's no rhyme or reason," Paula Keyser said. "So our reason for doing this walk is to create that awareness, to create that buzz.

That buzz ought to go great with Jeremy's lightsaber.

For more information about the local support group or Saturday's walk, click on over to www.gothydro.org .