In September my beautiful 14 year old daughter, Abigale, was diagnosed with a rare medical condition called Friedreich's Ataxia. Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) is a debilitating, life-shortening, degenerative neuro-muscular disorder. About one in 50,000 people in the United States have Friedreich's ataxia. Here is a link with more detailed information, https://www.mda.org/disease/friedreichs-ataxia. This will eventually put her in a wheelchair. Until then she will have other devices to assist her in walking. As of right now we are waiting to receive braces that she will have to wear from the knee down. We are raising money to assist with the cost of such devices. Abby's knees have been locking on her, these braces are going to help prevent this from happening, so that she doesn't end up damaging her knee caps. 

Here is some stuff Abby is going thru at this stage with her FA. She has a hard time walking, her feet/legs will, as she puts it, just stop working. This in turn causes her to run into things and sometimes even fall down. Just the other night she almost fell in the shower 4 times. I told her we were going to find stuff to make the tub less slick. She said it had nothing to do with that, her legs just weren't wanting to hold her up. She goes to physical therapy every Tuesday, they're working on strengthening her legs and core right now. She has exercises to do at home too. She also does 20-30 minutes of cardio a day to keep her heart strong, as the FA effects her heart as well.  She will have to see her neurologist and cardiologist once a year as of now. When we met the cardiologist he said her heart was functioning fine, it was a little larger than normal, for her age, but nothing he was worried about at this time.  Enlargement of the heart is one of the things the FA causes. She also has the beginnings of scoliosis, this is also something that goes along with the FA.