Making Memories | Blake Posey’s Dad Barry Joins Kiran Chawla

Welcome back to this week's episode of Louisiana Unfiltered.

For our local viewership, you guys have probably heard the story of Blake Posey.

His dad is joining us today in studio to kind of tell us what all is going on with him.

Barry, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

So our immediate viewership, listenership, they may know Blake's story.

But for others who don't, I guess let's start with tell us who you guys are.

Tell us your family dynamics and who is Blake.

So my wife Brandi and I, we've been married for almost 20 years, and we tried to conceive children for the first several years we were married and were unable to.

So God kind of directed us in the direction of fostering and then eventually fostering to adopt.

So in 2014, Blake and his two older brothers, Brandon and Bear, moved in, and we started fostering them.

About a year later, we adopted them.

So in August of 2015, we adopted them.

And in the time we were fostering them, we noticed that there were some issues with Blake, with his ability to move.

And a previous foster family thought maybe he was just unathletic.

But we started checking the things and found out that he had Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, which is a rare form of muscular dystrophy, that it onsets at adolescence.

And it attacks muscular dystrophy.

It causes the person's body to not produce dystrophin.

And dystrophin is what gives your muscles their strength.

And so what happens is, like in Blake's case, Blake was able to walk until he was 10 years old.

And at 10, he lost his ability to walk.

And then from there, it begins to attack the arms.

And now the stage we're at, of course, because the heart is a muscle, it has attacked the heart.

Blake has a...

So because the left ventricle is basically the furthest place the blood is able to deliver dystrophin or whatever it may be, The left ventricle in some cases will stretch and in some cases will weaken.