Against the Odds

Cody also dreams of walking in the opening Olympic ceremonies—but as a star athlete. It's an ambitious goal for a 6-year-old who wasn't expected to live past his first day, but Cody is used to defying the odds.

When Cody was born, his parents, Tina and Mike, immediately knew something wasn't right. "The doctors got very quiet. The nurses got very quiet," Mike says. "I did notice that his legs looked different—they didn't straighten out." Mike was told their baby boy had an incurable disease and wouldn't make it through the day. "That's when Mike had told me that we needed to mourn the loss of our son," Tina says.