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New treatments, therapy, rehab help little girl beat medical odds
Aspen Wright feels so much love at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Center for Advanced Technology and Robotic Rehabilitation. At four-years-old, she's already beat the odds. Doctors thought she wouldn't live beyond age two. But new treatments, therapy and rehab are keeping her moving in the right direction.
ATLANTA - Aspen Wright is pretty beloved here at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Center for Advanced Technology and Robotic Rehabilitation.
Lee Ann Walb, her occupational therapist, says the Peachtree City preschooler comes in with a smile on her face.
"Oh, she’s so fun," Walb says. " She’s precocious. She’s energetic. She’s the kind who walks into the gym. Everyone says ‘Aspen is here!’"
Three-feet-tall, and just 28 pounds, Tabitha Wright says Aspen, her youngest daughter, is a typical 4-year-old.
"She loves Barbies, playing outside with her friends, riding her bike," Wright says. "At this point, she rides her wheelchair around the neighborhood with her sister."
In the fall of 2018, Aspen Wright was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA, when she was just 3-months-old.
SMA, a motor neuron disorder, is causing Wright to lose gradually the nerve cells in her brainstem and spinal cord that control her muscles. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, one in every 6,000 babies is born with the condition.
When she started therapy at Children’s Healthcare, she had a hard time holding her body up.
"The biggest problem for her was just her back and her abdominal strength," Walb says. "It was limiting her ability to balance in sitting positions, in standing positions."
Walb works with a physical therapist to help Aspen strengthen her muscles and coordination.
"We’re really looking at her core stability and control to try to strengthen that so that she can use her arms or walk better," she says.
About 1 in 10,000 children are born with SMA each year in the US.
The disorder can gradually affect a child’s ability to sit, walk, breathe, and even swallow.
Four years after her diagnosis, Wright is on new medication, and has received gene therapy for SMA.
So, Wright comes to Children’s every few months for several weeks of intensive rehab, to keep her muscles moving, and try to stay a step ahead of SMA.
"Aston’s condition is neurodegenerative, so it will continue to progress," Walb says. "The medication that she’s been taking will help with that, but she will probably need therapy for a long time."
While Aspen plays, electrodes send signals, telling her muscles to contract and strengthen, awakening neural pathways that have gone quiet.
"So we’re trying to remind the brain how to use the muscles, but also strengthen the muscles themselves," Walb says.
Tabitha Wright says no one knows what the future holds.
But, right now, she says, Aspen is gaining ground.
"We just have to keep moving, keep moving on and giving her all the tools that she needs to get stronger," Wright says. "That’s what we do."