Generally little ones don’t get pancreatitis; it’s an illness adults usually get after heavy drinking and smoking. But the family of one kid in St. Cloud wants to bring awareness to childhood pancreatic disease.

Jameson Brown looks like your typical 3-year-old. He eats, he plays, but daily medication is a reminder that things weren’t always this way.

“We knew it was something more than what they were telling us,” his mother Colette Brown said.

For two years doctors could not pinpoint what was wrong, but mom kept pushing for answers.

“I think the hardest part as a parent was having to sit there and not be able to do anything for him,” Brown explained. “Have to watch him be poked and prodded and cut open and things shoved in and out of him and him crying for us. And we couldn't do anything.”

Jameson was diagnosed with pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas rare in kids and not easily detectable. “All of his organs were fused together from how much damage and inflammation the pancreas had caused,” Brown said.

While no doctors wanted to perform surgery, earlier this year they found a specialist in Minnesota who was willing to remove Jameson’s pancreas.

This is the first holiday season the Browns can have a somewhat normal life. 

“To see him now, it’s definitely worth everything we had to go through," Jameson said. "He’s a different kid. This is like his new lease on life.”

Brown says parents should trust their gut-feeling if they think something’s really wrong with their child and seek medical attention, given any symptoms.

Symptoms of pancreatitis include pain in the upper abdomen, nausea, vomiting, fever, and sometimes dehydration and low blood pressure.