Word: elizabeth
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Jannine and John Cody were packing to move from Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio in 1985 when a military doctor gave them some devastating news. Their 6-week-old daughter Elizabeth was missing part of her 18th chromosome. To explain what that meant, the doctor showed Jannine a textbook with a horrifying picture and caption that she still keeps in her files. It read, "They are probably the most seriously afflicted among carriers of chromosome abnormalities. They maintain the froglike position observed in infants and are reduced...
...Elizabeth's first year included three surgeries to fix a cleft palate and a cleft lip. By age 2, she had slipped far behind on the growth charts. Her pediatrician seemed to think that was inevitable, but her mother demanded that Elizabeth's symptoms be treated, a radical notion at the time. She took her daughter to an endocrinologist, who put Elizabeth on daily injections of human growth hormone, a therapy that caused her to grow like a weed and blossom developmentally as well. When Elizabeth had difficulty learning to speak, Cody pushed for her to see a neurologist...
...journey to save Elizabeth took both mother and daughter to unexpected places. Cody went back to college and earned a Ph.D. in human genetics at age 42. Her dissertation topic: syndromes of the 18th chromosome. Today this former homemaker and president of her local embroiderers' guild conducts genetic research at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Her work has helped raise Elizabeth's IQ into the normal range and has provided a model for helping the approximately 500 other kids in the U.S. with the same defect. Cody also set up the Chromosome 18 Registry and Research Society...
This month Cody will reap a huge personal reward for her efforts: Elizabeth will graduate from high school. A few years ago, Cody sat watching Elizabeth's pep squad perform at a football game, wearing red, white and blue, the school colors. "Suddenly I'm watching, and I realize I can't pick her out of the crowd. She wasn't so bad!" says Cody. "I just burst into tears. I never ever thought I would see the day when she'd just be one of the girls in high school, out there on the field with all the other...
...recent afternoon, Elizabeth Cody comes bounding down the stairs to greet her mother, who has just returned from work. There is nothing froglike or vegetative about the bright-eyed 19-year-old, who flops onto the sofa and expresses relief that her mother has remembered to bring home a chart showing exactly which part of her 18th chromosome is missing. "A boy at my school used to make fun of me, so I wanted to show him this," Elizabeth explains. After graduation in May, Elizabeth plans to attend a local community college, and then become a teacher's assistant...