By Nick Dostilio
On May 7, the Cape Cod Canal held a special event by a Cape Cod family called the OI walk. Every year, the Manduca family has been holding an event for a disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). It is to raise awareness of this condition that affects the Manduca family greatly and for other people that have it too. This walk was thought up by Cheryl Manduca, the mother of the family, and has been happening for six years.
On May 7, the Cape Cod Canal held a special event by a Cape Cod family called the OI walk. Every year, the Manduca family has been holding an event for a disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). It is to raise awareness of this condition that affects the Manduca family greatly and for other people that have it too. This walk was thought up by Cheryl Manduca, the mother of the family, and has been happening for six years.
The walk is from 9 o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock and it starts at the Train Bridge where there are a few things for the younger children to do like make bead accessories or other arts and crafts, also there are donuts to snack on for everyone. From there, you can walk along the trail and go as far as you want and then head back to the train bridge. Then when everyone is back, they gather up and take a group picture, as seen in the picture above. Sadly, this year, it wasn’t a great weather outside, but it didn’t dampen the spirits of these people who attended the walk this year.
Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or OI, is a disease that causes your bones to be frail and break easily. Also, this disease caused a lack in type 1 collagen that causes the whites of your eyes have a tint of blue. Even though this condition is called a “disease”, OI is not contagious and is passed down by genetics, so unless you have the genes that cause OI, there is no way you can get it. Some nicknames for Osteogenesis Imperfecta are OI and brittle bones disease. The people who have OI are called snowflakes because “no OIer is the same”, according to Hailey Manduca. Every person with OI may have a few different symptoms aside from the normal symptoms and they may have different levels of severity among the people with OI, hence the name snowflakes.
The Manduca family, the people who hold this event, have this condition. Nobody in the family history had it but Cheryl, the mother, because of a random mutation, and was passed down to her children, Savine, James, and Hailey Manduca. Hailey has this condition worse than the rest of the family. She has live a portion of her 18 years of her life in a wheelchair because of her condition, but that doesn’t hold her back from achieving her dreams of being an orthopedic (bone) doctor. It is still a hard road to take because people don’t see her as much as a person, but more as an object because of her condition, but she is always positive and looks for the best in everything.