Athena Noelle Reitano was born on August 9, 2001 in Weymouth, Massachusetts.  She is our second daughter, her older sister's name is Raven.  Athena was born 4&1/2 weeks premature and had some health issues at birth, but was given a clean bill of health by the time she was a year old.  We were thrilled...we had 2 beautiful, healthy children.  Everything seemed wonderful.  Our family was complete, we bought our first house, & life went on very uneventful for about a year.

Athena was hitting all of the normal physical & mental milestones that she was supposed to, but she wasn't walking.  She could "cruise" along holding onto furniture or someone's hand though.  We were told that she was probably delayed because she was a preemie, but would surely walk by the time she turned 3.  We ended up getting an occupational therapist for her to help her along because her foot turned out a bit and we took her to an ophthalmologist, who prescribed glasses for nearsightedness.  Other than that, we were confident that she was fine.  

When Athena neared her second birthday, we began to notice some very troubling physical problems.  She was having extreme difficulty with head control and balance.  Then she quickly lost the ability to pull herself up or sit unassisted, she would just fall over.  She also started dragging her head on the floor when she would crawl.  We panicked, and our pediatrician sent her to see a neurologist.  On the first visit the neurologist told us that she had horrible news.  Athena most likely had ALS (Lou Gehrigs Disease).  She was 99% sure.  

She said Athena would never walk and life span for the disease was very short.  They did some blood work and told us that the results would take a month.  It turns out, Athena does not have ALS.  For the past year she has been through a battery of tests to find out what she does have.  We have had many highs and lows, from the suspicion of ALS and many other equally devastating diseases, to the thought that she had "Chronic Inflammatory Demylenating Polyneuropathy",  which we were told was treatable & she could even make a full recovery.  

We even brought her to the Holy land of Medugorje, Croatia in search of a miracle.  Her health has gone back & forth also.  She has had "rag doll syndrome", which is the loss of all muscle control, only to turn around and gain all of the skills she had lost back.  She was even pulling herself up to stand again at one point.
  Then in March 2004 all of Athena's progress ended, and she got very sick again.  She had an MRI, and it showed that the white matter in her brain was Demylenating.  They took more blood and urine to test, and on June 7, 2004 we received the most horrific news imaginable.  Athena has `"Metachromatic Leukodystrophy".

My perfect, beautiful angel is going to die unless we find a cure.  This is completely unconceivable to me still.  All I know is that we are not going to let that happen without the fight of our lives first.  We know that miracles happen every day, and our faith in God is immeasurable.  We are eternally grateful to Him for blessing us with both of our daughters....they are such a gift.