Hello there and welcome to Action4Ashton.org. Thank you for your interest in Ashton and learning more about his life with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. My name is Deanna. I am Ashton’s mom and site author.

Currently Ashton is 10 years old and in 4th grade. In many respects Ashton is just a regular average boy who loves everything Lego, Minecraft and Star Wars. But in many more ways he does not have a typical childhood at all! He wants to climb things, run around, ride bike, play sports and walk the dog but Duchenne, the muscle disease he was born with really limits his strength, mobility, stamina and life. He also has to depend on people to help him do everyday things like getting dressed, getting out of a chair and getting up off the toilet and floor.

My intention with this website is to educate a bit about Duchenne and spread some Duchenne muscular dystrophy awareness. I am passionate about children who are born with an illness and/or disability that severely limits their abilities and life. I hope that I can be of help to other parents who also have children with special needs by sharing things that I’ve learned along the way.

Most importantly, I am going through all my photos and thoughts over his lifetime to fully chronicle Ashton’s life and share my amazing boy with you! I will be assisting Ashton with some of his own blog entries on this site as a creative outlet for him. He has a lot to say and he loves making videos. I will be highlighting some of his videos on this site and you can watch all currently uploaded videos on his YouTube Channel.

I will also have my own blog entries to share my thoughts as a mom of a child with life limiting illness without any sugar coating for those of you brave enough to read. The titles for all those posts will start with DMDmom. You can select DMDmom from the Categories dropdown box below or click on DMDmom in the tag cloud at the right to find those posts. This is a family friendly site and I will do my best to keep thoughts in the correct category giving you the readers control over how much honesty you can handle.

Be sure and check back often as I will regularly be adding new content both past and current. The newest posts are listed to the right. For a quick update go to the What’s New page from the menu. Click on the Facebook and Twitter buttons in the upper right corner to Like and Follow Ashton. Happy reading!