Anne Marie Tiernon/Eyewitness News
Indianapolis - A local man who keeps on growing plans to travel across the country for a surgery to save his life.
Alex and Nic Liss are 27-year-old twins, but Alex is five inches taller than Nice. Together the brothers run Rated X, a custom car shop downtown. They work on Ferrari, Porsche, Lexus and Cadillac models.
Alex is 105 pounds heavier than his twin. "I'm just big all the way around," he said.
The source of the problem is a puzzle. "I had a doc who asked me if I'm on steroids," said Alex.
It was just seven months ago a doctor immediate recognized Alex's symptoms and diagnosed him with a rare form of gigantism called aromegly.
"Hence the brow, and my hands and my ring size and my foot size and my knees I'm just overall big, big boned," he said.
The once-perfect pair started to differ during high school.
"Sixteen on it was just dramatic changes," said Nic.
"When you grow up and you look at yourself in the mirror every day, it became looking like at a demon in the mirror. It was like that was my monster that I was looking at in the mirror every day," Alex said. "Looking at my brother is like looking at a ghost from the past. Man, this is normal," he said, referring to an old picture. "This is not normal," he said, referring to his current appearance.
The obvious changes led to outcast treatment.
"When Alex isn't there, they will be like, man, your brother and sometimes it takes everything I have just not to jump at them cause it's like this is my brother, you know, did you lose track of that?" said Nic.
Determined to stop the continuous change, Alex went searching for a solution.
"Cure is not a pill, not a shot. It's surgery," he said.
Alex found California surgeon Hrayr Shahinian who will use a specially designed endoscope through Alex's nose to remove a benign tumor on his pituitary gland. It causes an overload of hormones to race through his body.
While it likely won't reverse symptoms, it will stop the progressing complications impacting this heart. "I'm trying to stay away from that category of just constantly getting worse and worse," he said.
While surgeries won't re-sync similarities, iIt will likely fine tune the twins for decade of extreme business to come.
Alex leaves Thursday for surgery Monday. We'll keep you updated.
