For the second home game of the season, the charity health initiatives host a little boy close to the hearts of some of our very own fans. Blake McMillan is 5 months old and was diagnosed after birth with MeCP2 duplication syndrome. Dad, Paul McMillan, is a lifelong devoted Dundee fan, Mum Jenny is the great niece of Bobby Seith and Dundee FC Director Steve Martin has close links with the family and will be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro from October 23rd to 31st to raise funds for the Blake McMillan Trust. Steve will be joined by fellow dees Duncan Soutar and Colin Morris on the climb, and to top it all off, one of the heroes of the ‘Deefiant’ season Craig Robertson is a Trustee of the Blake McMillan Trust.
MeCP2 Duplication Syndrome is a rare condition, occurring almost exclusively in males, with only around 150 diagnoses worldwide. Symptoms can include moderate to profound intellectual disability, weakened muscle tone, problems with feeding and failure to thrive, speech that is poor or non existent, and muscle stiffness. Severe, uncontrolled epilepsy is also very common with sufferers of this condition.
Developmental motor skills are profoundly delayed, such as sitting and walking, with one third of those diagnosed needing assistance with walking, with the majority needing a wheelchair by adolescence. Most sufferers have recurrent respiratory tract infections which often lead to pneumonia, sadly a major cause of death, with almost half of those affected succumbing to the illness by the age of 25.
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