The chances that Chase Howard might not reach his 10th birthday were pretty good.
The muscle tissue in his arms and legs had disintegrated so much and so quickly, he already needed a wheelchair to get around, and his mom, Pam, and Aunt Shellie thought for sure his heart and lungs were next.
You see, Chase has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a rare and deadly genetic disorder that strikes one in every 3,500 kids born, mostly boys, each year.
“Right now, his heart and lungs are functioning at 100 percent, but we’ve heard of kids younger than 10 dying,” Aunt Shellie said.
Whatever time Chase has left, his family, naturally, wants to make sure he’s as comfortable and happy as can be.
And so when the Marietta third-grader’s 10th birthday approached late last month, his Aunt Shellie McClain got an idea to make it special.
As so many of us do in this digital age, she logged onto her Facebook page.
“Chase’s birthday is Sept. 19. He will be 10. He won’t be able to have a normal birthday like most kids. No Chuck E. Cheese as he doesn’t have the strength to play the games … nothing like that,” she wrote.
“Soo … I am asking that if anyone would like to send him a card that would be huge for him. Message me for the address if you would like to help make his day great!”
Aunt Shellie has about 500 Facebook friends, so she wasn’t really expecting much.
“Maybe a shoebox full of cards,” she said. “I just wanted his day to be special.”
Shellie has been looking out for Chase since he entered this world, and though he’s her nephew, sometimes the bond feels more like mother and son.
“He’s just a special kid,” she said.
In the beginning, she and Chase’s mother believed a big part of his problem was he was simply clumsy, a little boy with an old man’s gait.
“There was no indication something might be wrong,” Aunt Shellie said. “We had no family history of muscular dystrophy.”
They were on a kindergarten field trip one day when he suddenly fell to his knees and couldn’t get up. When she took him to a doctor a few weeks later and he suggested a muscle biopsy, mother and aunt decided to get a second opinion.
A biopsy, they thought, was too invasive for someone so young.
A second doctor suggested they see a neurologist, and that’s when they learned Chase might have muscular dystrophy, probably Beckers, a milder form of the disease. At that point, Howard consented to a genetic blood test, and on Feb. 19, 2013, Pam’s birthday, it was confirmed.
Chase, who turned 7 that year, had DMD.
Howard cried.
Shellie, the fixer, was stunned.
She took to her computer and Googled Duchenne. Every body function will go. His digestion system will shut down. Eventually, his heart and lungs will wear out.
Because of the late diagnosis, Chase was deteriorating pretty quickly. He has needed a wheelchair since he was 7 years old. His feet are turned inward and his legs are contracted into a sitting position. He can’t lie flat or turn over in bed. He can still brush his teeth with help, but it’s getting more difficult to feed himself. He can barely lift his arms, so he can’t brush his hair. He has to drink out of a straw.
“He gets weaker as the day wears on,” Howard said.
As his 10th birthday approached, they felt grateful. Because it was kind of a milestone birthday, Aunt Shellie wanted to make it one to remember.
Immediately after she hit return on her Facebook post, friends and family began sharing it until finally a television reporter took notice.
Within three days of the airing of a story about Chase’s upcoming birthday, the cards and written notes began to flow like a heavy rain.
Scott Wilson, a U.S. Postal Service employee for 32 years, had never seen anything like it.
“For about 10 or 11 days there, I was delivering about 500 to 1,000 pieces of mail a day,” Wilson said. “It was absolutely awesome, particularly these days. I often wonder listening to the news if we even care for each other anymore. This is just reassurance that we still know how to love.”
It’s been a month now since Aunt Shellie’s Facebook post, and Wilson said the deliveries, although down to a trickle, are still coming in.
“I’m still delivering about eight or 10 a day,” he said. “He’s such a sweet kid. Seeing him get so excited is just heartwarming.”
At last count, Aunt Shellie, who reads every one, said Chase has received more than 9,100 cards total.
Some came from entire schools, including LaBelle Elementary, which Chase attends. Others came from individuals as far away as Japan, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Prison inmates sent cards. Corporations. Cobb County police, sheriff, fire and parks and rec departments hosted a birthday party at Jim R. Miller Park but not before picking Chase up in a full stretch limo. Hundreds showed up to help celebrate.
Last week, a woman mailed him five Halloween costumes: Superman, Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man and Thor.
Chase still doesn’t know what to make of it all.
“Oh, my gosh,” he nearly shouted as he thumbed through another tubful after school one day last week. “This is really cool.”
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