Kyram Dear has an infectious laugh.

The eight year old from Richmond, Ontario giggles as his father twirls him around before placing him in his wheelchair.

It’s a moment of joy that has come against incredible odds.

Kyram was born four months premature and very, very sick. He has severe cerebral palsy. He can’t talk, walk, stand or even sit. He has almost no control over his own body. He is also profoundly deaf.

To make his young life even harder, his mother fell ill soon after his birth. She passed away almost four years ago. “She had one good year with him after he came home from the hospital,” says his father, Myles Dear. “And she poured her time into him.”

Myles has been doing his best to nurture Kyram ever since, never knowing how much his son really understood.

Until two years ago when Kyram started to blink.

His blink means “yes.” It’s not much, but when asked both positive and negative versions of the same question, or given a list of, says letters or numbers, Kyram can communicate. “It was an exciting prospect two years ago to understand that he was capable of this,” says his father.

More recently, Kyram  began making a clicking sound into a microphone to manipulate a computer.

And with nothing more than clicks and blinks, Kyram is quickly proving just how sharp his mind is. He can now read and write at a grade 3 level, and even goes to school.

Developmentally, his potential is limitless. But physically, he requires 24-hour professional care. He’s been known to stop breathing in the middle of the night.

And Myles Dear says his son’s unique and costly requirements are falling through the cracks of two different provincial departments. So far, he’s managed to pay the bills by downsizing and, through bittersweet fortune, with the insurance money from his late wife.

“And in fact last Friday we just ran out of money. That fund is now exhausted,” he says.

So Myles Dear has taken Kyram’s cause online. He’s set up a crowdfunding account in hopes of raising $65,000 dollars. That’s enough, he says, to support Kyram for one year, to buy time while he files appeals with the province over more permanent funding. He is not about to give up on his remarkable young son.

“I love this little boy with all my heart,” he says. “Trying to do right by my wife’s memory.”

You can find out more at www.youcaring.com/helpkyram