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Girl with rare muscle disorder learns to walk at age 4
Published January 13, 2015
Lillia Reading is finally learning to walk and run at the age of 4 — after she was given splints.
Lillia was born with a rare muscular disease, which left both her knees permanently bent like a frog’s.
She developed just two muscles in each leg instead of 15 and got around by wheelchair or shuffling on her bottom.
But Lillia is now up and running — after doctors cut the tendons behind her knees and attached splints to straighten her legs.
Her mother, Katie, 31, said the splints cover her whole leg and bend around the knee.
"If she wants to get up and run around she can just pop them on, then take them off when she wants to sit," Katie said.
"She’s a proper little princess — and now she can strut around like one too.”
Doctors diagnosed Lillia’s condition — a form of muscular myopathy they had never encountered — after she was born four weeks early, weighing 4 pounds, 5 ounces. She's had 13 surgeries but nothing worked — until now.
Lillia, from Sheffield, now goes to nursery school and can’t wait to start primary school in September.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/girl-with-rare-muscle-disorder-learns-to-walk-at-age-4