windpipe

At two months old, he had his first major surgery, a tracheostomy - a hole in his windpipe to give him an alternative airway for breathing.

Eventually, at three months, he was diagnosed with tracheomalacia, a condition where the walls of a child’s windpipe collapse.

“They cannot operate and cut out the marble in my chest that is laying on my windpipe, and eventually would suffocate me to death,” she said.

The larynx functions like an antechamber to the windpipe, or trachea, with a flap of tissue called the epiglottis keeping food and drink from falling down the windpipe.

The measles virus infects the upper respiratory tract where it uses the trachea, or windpipe, as a trampoline to launch and spread through droplets dispersed when an infected person coughs or sneezes.