ZOE: Meow! Meow!
CHELSEA LUSH: She can have both of her legs
broken and still look like a total boss in her sunglasses.
CHELSEA LUSH: Zoe has broken countless bones.
CURTIS LUSH: We stopped counting because it’s pointless.
INTERVIEWER: Does it hurt when you break a bone?
ZOE: Yeah!
CHELSEA LUSH: Zoe’s condition is osteogenesis
imperfecta which means brittle bones and it has nothing to do with calcium deficiency,
which is the most common suggestion I hear from strangers, “Have you tried her giving
her calcium supplements?” CURTIS LUSH: “You want to give her some milk?"
CHELSEA LUSH: Thanks, she is going to be seven
yeas old, I haven’t tried that? ZOE: This shade of pink.
CHELSEA LUSH: We were told it was a one in 50,000 chance for it to happen to her. She
has mutation in her DNA which causes her OI and we were told that it was nothing that
either of us did or have ever done.
COMM: Parents Chelsea and Curtis were first
told that there was something seriously wrong during pregnancy.
CHELSEA LUSH: We were doing a 4D ultrasound
and they were able to see her multiple fractures that were fresh and healing already. She had
broken ribs, her arms and legs were about 6 weeks behind what they should have been.
So they told us that she had a really severe condition and that she possibly wouldn’t
make it until her birthday.
ZOE: I’m going to get some toys to play with.
CHELSEA LUSH: The specialist recommended or
suggested that we could just terminate the pregnancy but it was more than that to us.
It was our first child together. CURTIS LUSH: We actually did contemplate the
abortion that she was telling us that was the only thing that was humane and then we were
in a paniced state. CHELSEA LUSH: There are a couple different
types of OI with different severities and so Zoe was misdiagnosed with a Type 2, the
most severe. And ended up her genetic results told us that she had Type 3 OI which is still
very severe.
COMM: Born in October 2010 with multiple healing
fractures, Zoe was in hospital for a week before she was able to come home, and her
parents started to adjust the caring for their little girl.
CURTIS LUSH: When we were changing Zoe’s
diaper, in the beginning it took three of us. One person to lift up her pelvis, one
person to slide the diaper in and out and then another person to hold her arms because
babies have a startle reflex and I was on arms duty. I gave her just a little bit of
room it was a quarter inch to an half a inch and she startled into my hand, it sounded
like a broken chicken bone. He radius and ulna just snapped.
COMM: Zoe has endured a number of painful
surgeries, including one to stop her spine collapsing due to a condition called surgical
kyphosis, which would cause internal decapitation.
CHELSEA LUSH: A really interesting series
of X-rays and scans for Zoe. Here in the first picture was one of the first scans that we
got for her. You can really see that the spinal cord is completely compressed back there.
Zoe has been in her neck brace from the time she was diagnosed with her cervical kyphosis
at about two and a half years old, and is still currently in it.
COMM: Now at six years old, things are getting
a bit easier for the family.
CHELSEA LUSH: Her being able to tell us,
"I just broke” or “No, you didn’t break me” or “Hold on, please don’t move me”.
Oh! You’re using your elbow. Good job.
CURTIS LUSH: It’s so much easier. I mean
it’s day and night. CHELSEA LUSH: Nice job!
ZOE: I did it. CHELSEA LUSH: That was a really good job.
CHELSEA LUSH: Today we came to Tewinkle Park
to have fun at the wheelchair accessible playground. Are you excited?
ZOE: Yeah. CHELSEA LUSH: It’s one of the only ones in
Orange County that Zoe is able to play on, because the ground is made out of foam instead
of wood chips or sand. She, especially this playground, is able to do everything that
the other kids are, other than run on their feet, but she can race them just as fast in her wheelchair.
CHELSEA LUSH: Sometimes I worry about her
getting hurt if other kids don’t know the extent of her condition. Zoe has a big enough
voice where she will tell someone, “Please don’t touch my wheelchair. Please don’t
touch my wheelchair”, and that’s very helpful.
CHELSEA LUSH: We have prescription valium,
prescription hydrocodone, just in case she does fracture and all of the splinting supplies
to do it ourselves. We’ve had that since she was an infant. We carry it with us in
our bag everywhere we go.
COMM: As well as regular physio to help improve
her quality of life, Zoe also has speech therapy.
VANESSA LARA: She has some little bit of like
some structural issues with her mouth. She is working to increase her clarity in her
speech and also some of her language, some of her word orders and things like that, so
that she has more clarity when she is speaking and talking to her friends and family.
VANESSA LARA: Is Bailey gonna do speech with us today?
ZOE LUSH: Yeah.
VANESSA LARA: Okay. Show me your ’S’. You remembered it right away, I like it.
Zoe is amazing. She is so fun and she makes everything positive.
ZOE LUSH: I see the soup.
VANESSA LARA: Yup. What kind of soup?
CURTIS LUSH: OI does not give you a shortened
life expectancy. CHELSEA LUSH: There is no cure for osteogenesis
imperfecta. For now, I’m very grateful that there is at least treatments, because even
20 years ago, there wasn’t as many.
COMM: Despite the challenges she faces, Zoe’s
parents are confident that her tenacity and charm will guarantee her a bright future.
CHELSEA LUSH: I would not change Zoe if I
could take her away back, I would never ever take it back. In the future, I hope that Zoe
has just as well of an opportunity as everybody else.