Benefit walk honoring 12-year-old who died from VEDS complications

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — He may have looked like a performer thanks to his dancing skills on full display on TikTok, but 12-year-old Brennen Goody was all about sports.

“He aspired to be a professional soccer player or football player; he really liked Mahomes,” said his mother, Jackie Goody.

She described her eldest child as sweet, high energy, fun, and very empathetic.

“Anytime we drove by a homeless guy he’d want us to give him money, get him food, or let him come stay at our house,” she added.

A bug bite landed him in the hospital a few years back. Doctors thought the bruising looked odd and referred him to hematology. When specialists there couldn’t figure it out, they sent the family to genetics. Testing there revealed a gene mutation and a diagnosis of Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (VEDS). Because it’s so rare he wasn’t diagnosed until 2021 at the age of 10.

The disorder essentially makes one’s body fragile and susceptible to injury, making it easy for organs and blood vessels to rupture. That led to a lot of ER visits and stitches to his head.

“His skin kind of tore like tissue paper almost. The skin under his eyes would get dark because that skin there is already pretty thin,” Jackie Goody said.

For a kid who loved soccer and football, that made things incredibly difficult. Brennen’s parents ultimately stopped him from playing contact sports and got him seen by specialists on a regular basis at Children’s Mery. Everything seemed to be going okay until a week after Brennen turned 12.

He was home sick with strep throat and started complaining of a stomachache. That stomachache, doctors learned, was actually his descending aorta rupturing.

“They did everything they could; they worked really hard,” Jackie Goody said. “There was a team of people flying in and out, bringing blood, trying to repair it, but his vessels were too friable. Every time they’d start to repair it it’d start to tear apart.”

Brennen died on June 13, 2023, leaving behind two younger siblings, parents, grandparents, and dog. His family is now working to keep his legacy alive.

“He was very big on helping people and doing the right thing. I just want to be able to pass that on,” his mother added.

The family is holding a walk in Brennan’s honor Saturday morning at Macken Park in North Kansas City from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The money raised will go to a doctor at Texas Children’s Hospital who’s currently studying VEDS in young people.

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