Rare disease turns 3-year-old’s muscles to bone
Parents try to give him a normal childhood, though every bruise is a danger
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Boy fights disease that turns muscle into bone Oct. 15: TODAY’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, reports on a young boy who is fighting a rare and disabling genetic disease that turns muscle and tissue into bone. The boy, Joshua, and his parents, Stacy and David Scoble, talk with TODAY’s Ann Curry.
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Boy fights disease that turns muscle into bone Oct. 15: TODAY’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, reports on a young boy who is fighting a rare and disabling genetic disease that turns muscle and tissue into bone. The boy, Joshua, and his parents, Stacy and David Scoble, talk with TODAY’s Ann Curry.
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By Mike Celizic
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updated 7:12 a.m. PT, Thurs., Oct . 15, 2009
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He’s a 3-year-old boy who enjoys the things every kid his age loves — riding his bike and scooter, playing football in the front yard with his dad, wrapping his arms around his parents to share a hug.
And Josh Scoble’s parents let him do all those things — even though they know that any bump or bruise he suffers can bring him closer to the inevitable day when he is imprisoned by his own body, his flesh literally turned to bone, his arms and legs and head and even his jaw locked in immobility.
“Eventually it will take over his entire body and he won’t be able to move,” Josh’s mom, Stacy Scoble, said in a heartrending report that aired on TODAY Thursday.