Being a person on planet earth is a pretty tough job regardless of where you come from. The everyday struggles that everyone goes through can take a toll even on the strongest willed people. Even when you are lucky enough to be born into a good family, with a roof over your head and food on your table life will still throw you curveballs that you will never see coming until it’s too late. However, consider yourself lucky if you are born without a congenital deformity, learning disabilty or any other hurdle that makes living that much more difficult. For those who are born with heriditary diseases or congenital deformities an already hard life becomes that much more difficult.
This brings us to today’s story about a special girl named Hannah who was born with a rare congenital defect called primordial dwarfism. Primordial Dwarfism is so rare that currently there are only 100 people out of 7 billion who have this rare disease. These people have the odds stacked against them from the start, they grow much slower than people without the disease and their life expectency is cut short to a mere 30 years. When her biological mother was told by the doctors about her daughters condition, she knew she wouldn’t be able to take care of her so she made the difficult decision to put up poor baby Hannah for adoption. Because of her condition pretty much nobody wanted to adopt her, knowing that the responsibilty of caring for a child with special needs is about 10x harder than one without.
After months and months of no one adopting her, a couple named Jackie and Larry finally came along, who took one look at Hannah and knew she was the one who would be their daughter and become part of their family! Young Hannah now had a full blown family with 1 big sister named Kelly and 2 big brothers Matt and Mark. The family was absolutely amazing and treated Hannah with extra love, care and affection. Her siblings loved her as well and treated her no different than they treated eachother.
When Hannah got a bit older she became aware that she was different than other kids her age and her parents wanted to be completely honest with her while at the same time letting her know that her condition didn’t make her less of a person than anybody else. In fact, they told her she was 10 out seven billion with Primordial Dwarfism and this made her a miracle child. On top of growing much slower than other kids her age, she also had other health complications, such as heart problems, aneurysms, small teeth falling out and needing implants, scoliosis and worst of all polycystic kidney disease which inevitably could lead to her kidneys completely failing. However through all of this she persevered with grace and bravery.
After a few years, Hannah was school age and ready to begin her education at the same school her siblings went to. Even though she required special care due to her complex health issues, the whole family was determined to not make her feel like an outcast and give her a normal and ordinary childhood. However, school wasn’t easy for her because kids can just straight up be cruel. She was made of fun of, laughed at and mocked. But over the years, this only made her stronger and stronger as she overcame adversity after adversity. Also, her older siblings were very protective of their little sister and if they ever caught wind of bullies being mean to her, they defended her and always had her back no matter what!
With all of this going on, her adoptive mother needed a kidney transplant and somehow Hannah was a match to be a donor for her mom. Hannah decided that because her mom had pretty much saved her life she would do the same and give up one of her kidneys to save her mom’s life! Hannah is not only brave, beautiful and strong she is also a hero that we can all learn from!
Watch the video below for the full story and for pictures and videos of Hannah growing up:
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