By Wendy Burton
If Fort Gibson junior Carl Oakley, 17, ever ends up in a wheelchair, his sister plans to dump him out of it.
Oakley has Becker's muscular dystrophy, but his sister Brittany Nees, 15, was only joking along with him.
“Nothing has changed at home since he was diagnosed.” Nees said. “He's just a regular guy.”
Oakley doesn't have any plans to end up in a wheelchair anyway, he said.
“Of course, if I do, I can always put some rims and a sound system on it,” Oakley joked.
Not diagnosed until spring 2008, he sometimes noticed a difference between him and his friends at a young age.
“I didn't really notice very much when I was little,” Oakley said. “But I did notice other kids were always faster and stronger than me.”
When he was four or five years old, his mother Bonnie Walrath said her son would wake up at night crying that his legs hurt.
“The doctors just told us it was growing pains,” Walrath said.
As Oakley grew, Walrath noticed more and more often that he had muscle cramps in his body, arms and legs. Though he loved playing little league football from second grade on, Oakley didn't get field time very often.
“I just couldn't really play because, even when I just stretch, I would start cramping real badly,” Oakley said.
During blood work for medication he took last year, his doctor discovered he had some elevated liver enzymes.
Extensive testing went on from there, ending with a muscle biopsy and a diagnosis.
“I was devastated when he was diagnosed,” Walrath said. “Muscular dystrophy is passed down through the mother, from somewhere in my family.”
In the future, Oakley will never be as strong as other men his age, and he won't be going to the NFL as he dreamed after all, she said.
Still, he won't give football up for anything.
Today, Oakley is on the Fort Gibson High School football team. He doesn't do all the exercises his teammates do at practice, but he does what he can.
And, although Oakley doesn't get to play much, he still goes to every practice and every game to support his friends.
“I just want to be like a regular kid,” he said. “I want to be out there with my friends, even if I don't get to play.”
According to www.mda.org, a Web site dedicated to education about the disease, Becker's muscular dystrophy is a slowly progressing disease that includes general wasting and weakness of the body's muscles.
“There is no cure, no treatment,” Walrath said, “but at least we have answers now.”
However, she is certain that her son can live a full and productive life as long as he continues to stay healthy and exercise, keeping his heart healthy and strong.
She is inspired by the way her son has handled his diagnosis.
“For me, it's inspirational watching him go from a young boy who wanted to go to the NFL to a young man who completely changed his direction in life,” Walrath said.
Oakley plans to go to college and possibly become a nurse or doctor.
“Maybe there's other people with muscular dystrophy that I can get to know better,” Oakley said. “So I can help them get to know their disease better.”
More about muscular dystrophy
• Numbers —The incidence muscular dystrophy is about 1 in 651,450 persons in the United States.
• Definition — Becker’s is one of nine types of muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic, degenerative diseases primarily affecting voluntary muscles.
• Cause — Insufficient production of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep muscle cells intact.
• Onset — Adolescence or adulthood.
• Symptoms — Generalized weakness and wasting first affecting the muscles of the hips, pelvic area, thighs and shoulders. Calves are often enlarged. BMD is similar to Duchenne muscular dystrophy but often much less severe. There can be significant heart involvement.
• Progression — Disease progresses slowly and with variability but can affect all voluntary muscles. Most with BMD survive well into mid- to late adulthood.
• Inheritance — BMD primarily affects boys and men, who inherit the disease through their mothers. Women can be carriers but usually exhibit no symptoms.
Source: wrongdiagnosis.com/b/beckermd and www.mda.org.
