Tiffany is 44 years old and lives in the body of an 83-year-old – She weighs only 27 kg, but has “tons” of strength

THE Tiffany Wedekind is 44 years old, weighs about 27 kg, is only 1.35 cm tall and suffers from a rare disease: progeria. “Being so young makes some people think they can take advantage of me. It has my moments of sadness, but I immediately snap out of them. “Bouncing” is definitely a strength of mine,” he says in People magazine.

Her tiny build didn’t stop her from chasing her dreams. “I basically looked like a little doll” she continues and adds: “I knew from a very early age that something was different about me. But I just wanted to live my life and be like everyone else” recalling a childhood filled with jazz dancing, tap dancing and ballet, playing softball, basketball and tennis and cheerleading in high school.

When he turned 20 the first signs appeared. Her hair was falling out and her teeth were starting to decay. When her older brother, Chad, who was also small for his age, developed various bone and heart problems, doctors looked deeper.

Genetic tests diagnosed the siblings as suffering from progeria, a rare and fatal disorder of rapid aging, which currently affects 1 in 20 million people worldwide. The disease often kills patients in their teens and there is no cure.

The children’s mother Linda, 73, a retired nurse who has the same milder form of the disease, which she inherited in two of her three children through a random gene mutation, he is among the oldest survivors of progeria in the world.

Tiffany’s condition took a turn for the worse after her diagnosis in 2010. “I started to struggle really hard when I was about 35,” she says.

Her ailments include cardiovascular disease, arthritis and stiff knees, while aortic valve stenosis puts her on constant alert for cardiac arrests like the one that killed her brother, aged 39.

“My brother’s death opened my eyes to what the rest of my life will be like” says Tiffany living every moment and every day. She took the first step in 2017 when she publicized her illness through social networks. 350 people suffer from the same disease worldwide and Tiffany tries to show them that life has not stopped. She is an entrepreneur, makes her own candles, loves to dance, goes out with her friends, works out and doesn’t let her illness and aging body get the better of her.

“A nurse said to me two years ago, ‘You’re only 42,'” he says. “And I answer her, ‘Ma’am, I shouldn’t even be alive. Don’t rely on my age.” I don’t let old age define me. I am not that, I just happen to suffer from this disease, which makes me unique in a way” he emphasizes and concluded that “there are so many people who don’t live in the moment. Now is all we have. I really want people to appreciate it».