he birth of her baby was nothing like Leann had imagined. Three-pound 4-ounce Jessica arrived nine weeks early, a tiny soul fighting for her brand-new life. She had meningitis, a septic infection, water on the brain, and then she had a stroke in her spinal cord, paralyzing her from the chest down. She wasn't expected to walk or talk; a normal life seemed like an impossible dream. But her mother wouldn't give up: she kept looking for doctors, she kept searching for answers. And her persistence led to an extraordinary triumph over the odds. With the help of a doctor who stepped up to the challenge, Leann implemented a daily regimen of exercise for her little girl, and together they developed a new approach to spinal cord rehabilitation in children that brought Jessica to her feet, and that holds the promise of an unimaginably bright future for children with spinal cord injury. Meet the bright, talkative little girl who defied the odds, and the mother and doctor who wouldn't take no for an answer, and find out what every family with a devastating medical condition should know about reaching beyond a negative prognosis, and refusing to give up