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The words Cerebral Palsy are used to describe a medical condition that affects the control of the muscles. Cerebral means anything in the head and palsy refers to anything wrong with control of the muscles or joints in the body. If someone has cerebral palsy it means that because of an injury to their brain they are not able to use some of the muscles in their body in the normal way. Children who have cerebral palsy, or otherwise referred to as CP, may not be able to walk, talk, eat or play in the same ways as most other kids. It is important to know that CP is not a disease or illness. It is not contagious and it does not get worse, but it is not something you “grow out of”. Children who have CP will have it all their lives. Children with CP have many problems, not all of them related to the brain injury. Most of these complications are nevertheless neurological. They include epilepsy, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Many people in today’s world continue to be blind sighted as to what cerebral palsy really is even though many are continuously faced with it everyday. Cerebral palsy is a term used to describe a group of disorders effecting body movement and muscle coordination. The definition of CP is “a non-progressive but not unchanging disorder of movement and/or posture, due to an insult or anomaly of the developing brain.” Development of the brain starts in early pregnancy and continues until about age three. Damage to the brain during this time may result in CP. This damage interferes with messages from the brain tot he body, and from the body to the brain. We do not know the cause of most cases of cerebral palsy. That is we are unable to determine what caused cerebral palsy in most children who have congenital CP. We do know that the child who is as highest risk for developing CP is the premature, very small baby who doesn not cry in the first five minutes after delivery, whoi needs to be on a ventilator for over four weeks, and who ha bleeding in his brain.
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