re: Odell is nothing but awesome

quote:

---

Deja has cerebral palsy, a muscle and brain disability. She has virtually no control over her muscles and spends most of the day confined to a chair. Deja cannot do the routine things in life on her own, such as eat or bathe, all things that most people take for granted. She can see but is considered legally blind.

“How I look at it, every time I wake up in the morning, a lot of people complain about the situations that they’re in,” Marquise told ESPN.com's AFC East blog. “We have practice this morning or we have weights [to lift]. How I look at it is what a good opportunity I have, because my sister, she hasn’t been able to walk or do anything physically for herself, really.

“So for me to have an opportunity to come out here and do sports and be able to just wake up and go look at myself in the mirror every morning, I realize that I’ve been blessed in my life and that I’m blessed with an opportunity to be able to do things for myself. She lives through me, because she’s never been able to do anything like that. We live vicariously through each other.”

Deja, who was born three months premature and underdeveloped, spent 38 straight days in the hospital post-birth. Marquise, who is 10 months older, said he was too young at the time to fully understand the situation.

Doctors told their mother, Tamina, that Deja would not live beyond 6 months. The Goodwin family spent more than a month hoping to see dramatic improvement in Deja, and they did to the point where she was finally able to leave the hospital.

---