Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/87297
education PATHOLOGY PERSPECTIVES | BODY AWARENESS | FUNCTIONAL ANATOMY | SOMATIC RESEARCH Erica is a 35-year-old massage therapist with two young children. She also has spastic diplegia, a common form of cerebral palsy (CP). Erica was born 10 weeks premature and adopted as an infant. Unlike many other preemies, she didn't catch up on her growth, and she was diagnosed with CP when she was 18 months old. "My parents were told to institutionalize me in 1979," she says. "Last year, I ran four half, and two full, marathons. I proved them all wrong." Adults with Cerebral Palsy It's Not Just a Children's Condition By Ruth Werner WHAT IS CP? CP is a group of conditions involving brain injuries that occur early in life: prenatally, during birth, or in early infancy. It is diagnosed about 10,000 times per year. In spite of great efforts to reduce the rate of CP, its incidence has remained stable for several decades. This is probably due to the fact that more premature babies survive today than ever before, and these babies are particularly at risk for the kinds of injuries associated with CP. The official definition of CP has been updated recently: "A group of permanent disorders of the development of movement and posture, causing activity limitation, that are attributed to nonprogressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy are often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, perception, cognition, communication, and behavior, by epilepsy, and by secondary musculoskeletal problems."1 42 massage & bodywork november/december 2012