She was a twenty-year-old university student and was losing her ability to walk. She had been diagnosed at a very young age with cerebral palsy. She walked a little later than most, and with a visibly different pattern than the rest of us, but she was perfectly functional.
Incredibly, her mother had been told by medical professionals from very early on to expect that when she got into young adulthood she would gradually lose her mobility and end up in a wheelchair. Thankfully her mother did not believe this. After all, cerebral palsy is not a progressive disorder so how does this make sense?
This young person did, however, start to lose her mobility after puberty. Walking became more difficult and painful. Gradually the distance she was able to tolerate declined and getting around the university campus became an extreme challenge. Her mother refused to accept continued deterioration as inevitable, so she searched and found me.
When I went to see her, she was struggling to get around the house. The issue was that every part of her was extremely tight. Yes, people with cerebral palsy have tightness in some of their muscles and lack of activity in others, but this was over-the-top tight.
When muscles get too tight, they don’t function properly. While having cerebral palsy meant that she never had full control over all of her muscles, the control she did have was seriously impaired because of the tightness. It was also causing significant problems with alignment, and poorly aligned body parts also do not function well.
I am quite certain that these issues were the result of rapid growth in adolescence, and particularly because she was female, significant changes in the shape of the pelvis and hips which drastically affects alignment and stability. The hips and pelvis are the foundation of the building so when they are off, everything else is going to be as well.
We got to work freeing up tight muscles, improving her alignment, and working on her functional stability. Within about six months she was back to hoofing it around campus with her peers. Her mother felt vindicated in her refusal to believe a non-progressive disorder should result in such a deterioration in function. We are all convinced that had they not sought out treatment when they did, she would indeed have ended up in a wheelchair.
I continued to work with her for many months to solidify our gains. Then came the ultimate compliment. They “fired” me. I walked away from that family knowing that I had truly changed a life, and left them empowered to know when she might need treatment again.
Unfortunately, people with cerebral palsy are inevitably told to “live with it”. The diagnosis is definitely not going away, but treatment over the lifespan can not only preserve mobility but also prevent issues like painful joints before they start, or at the very least delay the onset of the osteoarthritis associated with alignment and stability challenges. If you or someone you love has cerebral palsy, don’t accept functional decline as inevitable. Know that there is something that can be done about it that nobody ever told you about.