A 21-year old college student with cerebral palsy experienced a full circle moment when she got a chance to work with researchers at a clinic that helped change her life as a child.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have a story this morning of one family’s response to cerebral palsy. It’s a brain disorder that affects body movement and muscle coordination. If you picked 1,000 kids at random, you know, a good-sized school full of kids, two or three kids would have this. One college senior and her family were able to do something about it. Minnesota Public Radio’s Dan Kraker has her story.
DAN KRAKER, BYLINE: When she was about two months old, Arden Grim says her mother noticed something wasn’t right.
ARDEN GRIM: My right arm was more tight than the left side. It was always in a fist. My right arm was constantly up against my body.
KRAKER: Grim, who’s 21 now, had suffered a stroke two months before she was born that weakened the right side of her body.
A GRIM: That neurologist told my parents that it was possible that I would never walk or talk or function successfully in my life.
KRAKER: Here is her dad, Mark.
MARK GRIM: We looked at each other and just kind of decided in that moment that that isn’t how we were going to let this play out and that we were going to, you know, do everything in our power to get our child to have her best life.
KRAKER: They learned about a research clinic that offered intensive therapy for kids to improve their motor skills. When Grim was just 2 years old, her family packed up their three young kids and drove 1,000 miles from Minnesota to the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Grim had a cast put on her dominant left arm. Then for 6 hours a day for an entire month, she worked with therapists to improve the functioning of her weaker right side.
BRENDA GRIM: I would call her fierce.
KRAKER: Brenda Grim says they brought their daughter there four times before she turned 7.
B GRIM: She was not going to quit. And I really do think the Alabama team hammered that home. Like, you just don’t quit.
A GRIM: I wouldn’t be who I am today, have the functioning that I have today if I hadn’t done that therapy. It was incredibly life-changing.
KRAKER: Fast-forward now more than a dozen years, Grim is studying neuroscience at Smith College and she sees a flyer for an internship program at the same clinic where she got therapy, now housed at Virginia Tech. She applied, and this summer, she worked alongside some of the same therapists who treated her as a toddler.
MARY REBEKAH TRUCKS: To see her come in as an adult to be an intern in the clinic, not to receive treatment, was really a full-circle moment.
KRAKER: Mary Rebekah Trucks is now associate director at the Neuromotor Research Clinic. While Grim was there to do research, Truck says she did so much more.
TRUCKS: She had moments where she could interact with kiddos who, I mean, she could picture herself there years ago. And to be able to say to them, hey, I learned to do this. I know it’s really hard now, but this is something you can do.
KRAKER: For example, Grim says she helped kids learn to zip their jackets.
A GRIM: So a lot of why it’s difficult is because it is very much a two-handed task.
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A GRIM: Being able to put the zipper together is a very challenging fine motor skill. So that was really cool, being able to contribute in that way and make that connection with the kids so they don’t feel so alone.
KRAKER: When Grim graduates, she plans to apply to medical school. She wants to become a pediatric neurologist to treat children who have conditions like hers.
A GRIM: There aren’t that many people in the medical professions, especially doctors, that are disabled. And I think that perspective is very unique.
KRAKER: And would allow her to offer families the insight and support she says they deserve.
For NPR News, I’m Dan Kraker in Duluth, Minnesota.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUILTY GHOSTS’ “THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE”)
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