| Updated: 9/02/2011 10:36 am |
Published: 9/02/2011 10:22 am |
"When she was a baby, she was a dream come true, but it wasn't a year and a half that we knew something was dreadfully wrong," says Mandy Jackson, Maggie's mom.
Her father says, "There were some developmental milestones that she wasn't meeting."
"Very slow speech, couldn't stack things, fine motor skills was really, really poor and a lot of balance issues."
And that's just the beginning of Maggie’s very long and emotional journey.
"It took five years of surgeries and six MRI's, two muscle biopsies, three trips to John's Hopkins," says Mandy.
And after several mis-diagnoses, doctors finally figured out what was wrong.
The diagnosis: congenital muscular dystrophy. It's progressive disease that over time causes muscle weakness and affects the brain.
"You wish you could just make it go away, fix it all for the family and make everything you know... perfect. But you can't," says her Dad.
But Maggie is a fighter.
"It's kind of like usual, but sometimes you have to do something different than everyone else does," Maggie says.
Her motivation: faith and dance.
"When I dance," says Maggie, "it's really, really fun. Sometimes I get a little tired with my legs, but it's OK."
Sadly, Maggie won't always be this active. It's a progressive disease and right now there is no cure. But she and her family hope researchers will change that, one step at a time.
