DECEMBER 24, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2015, 11:25 AM
BY BY DIANA OLIVEIRA
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
When discussing her hobbies, 8-year-old Chloe Fernandez appears no different from any other girl her age, but she has already accomplished more than some people do in a lifetime.
With the help of Make-A-Wish and the Macy’s Believe Campaign this holiday season, she is a published author who just had her first book preview.
The precocious 8-year-old loves being active. She plays dress-up and often pretends to be Rowan Blanchard from Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World,” putting on a show in the living room for her dolls. She rides her scooter around the house, even though it “drives Mom crazy,” she said. She also swims and plays the piano and harmonica.
But when Chloe swims, she can only go to the pools at HackensackUMC Fitness & Wellness Center in Maywood because they contain filtered salt water as opposed to chlorine. And Chloe attends harmonica lessons at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck; she took up the activity because it’s been proven to help lung function.
Suddenly, the normal 8-year-old image is skewed. Chloe is afflicted with a rare genetic condition called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a disease that attacks the cilia or “the natural hairlike extensions on the mucus membrane that help us clear our secretions,” according to Dr. Donna Lee, Chloe’s pulmonologist at Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at HackensackUMC.