Decided to just 'borrow' this from them instead:
CMT is a condition that affects the nerves in your legs and arms, known as the peripheral nerves.
Our body’s system of nerves is similar to a network of electrical wires. Some of them, called sensory nerves, are designed to pass information back to the brain about what you can feel with your fingers, toes, legs and arms, etc. The others are command pathways, telling your muscles to do something, like lift your left foot – and are called motor nerves.
Because CMT affects both types of peripheral nerve, you may experience motor problems as the command pathways fail to respond properly, causing weakness and wasting in your muscles and numbness/sensory problems, arising from the problems with the sensory nerves.
The ways it affects William is:
He falls a lot
He can't run very well and he can't walk very far
He can't jump very well and he can't hop
He has very high arches in his feet, it is a nightmare getting shoes to fit him
He has splints to wear at night because due to the muscles at the front of his lower leg being weak, the ones in the back of the leg can work harder to compensate which ends up pulling his foot downwards, over time this can cause the tendon in the back of the leg to shorten permanently, the only solution to which is surgery. The splints, along with stretching exercises help to keep the muscles, tendons etc, flexible.
Oh, and to top it off and completely unrelated he's jut had to have glasses for short-sightedness grrrr!
Feel free to ask any more questions
In brief, this is CMT:
is not life threatening
affects people very differently, even within the same family
slowly gets worse of time (is progressive), causing gradual deterioration of the both the motor nerves and the sensory nerves
this deterioration causes the atrophy of the muscles in the foot, lower leg, hand and forearm
can cause foot drop walking gate, foot bone abnormalities (including high arches and hammer toes), problems with hand function and dexterity, balance problems, occasionally cramping in the legs and arms and loss of some normal reflexes
may cause long term pain and chronic tiredness
is usually passed on from parent to child, with a 50% chance of the child inheriting the condition
is thought to affect approximately 23,000 people in the UK
Affects all ethnic groups equally throughout the world
Is the focus of major research, bringing us closer to answering the CMT enigma
Gemma x
How is she?
