Cerebral Palsy; also known as CP, is a condition caused by injury to the parts of the brain that control our ability to use our muscles and bodies (http://www.chasa.org/). Cerebral dealing with the brain, and Palsy meaning weakness or problems with using the muscles, often the injury happens before birth, sometimes during delivery, or soon after being born. On the morning of August 27th, 1999, my mother gave birth to beautiful and seemingly healthy baby girl. At about 5 weeks into the world, my sister, Diamond, suffered a stroke in the middle of the night which would later lead to her being diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. My mother, like any mother would be, was devastated by the news. She'd had very high blood pressure and was advised to have a cesarean section instead of the normal vaginal birth, but even then my sister showed no signs of unhealthiness so you can imagine how much of a shock this news was. Of course my mother's first thought was "is there a cure for this?" and she began to explore her options. One of the few options for assisting a child with CP was therapy and from the many different therapy options my sister was put into both physical and occupational therapy. She had an extremely tough time growing up with CP and learning how to deal with it but as soon as she was old enough to understand what was going on with her physically and mentally, she did all she could to make her situation better.
From the time she was about 9 months old until the age of 10 years old she continued taking both physical and occupational therapy regularly 1-3 days a week, for 30 minute sessions. In that time we began to notice small things that made her different from any other child. While most children learn to crawl at about 9 months and begin walking at about 1, she didn't start crawling until a little over 1 year old and walking at a little over the age of 2. After being told by numerous doctors that Diamond had a milder to severe case of CP, my mother began to fear the worst.