WINNIPEG – With each passing step Bob Facca is getting closer and closer to Winnipeg.
Grandpa Bob, as he’s affectionately known, has been walking for nearly seven months from Quebec City to Winnipeg, all for his seven-year-old grandson Louis.
“If you saw him he’d be like a normal boy running around but as time goes on he gets slower and slower,” said Facca.
Louis was diagnosed with duchenne muscular dystrophy, a disease that weakens muscles and affects one in every 4,000 boys.
“As a grandparent, and all grandparents are the same, they just want to find a cure because we’d do anything we can do for our grand kids,” said Facca.
While there is no cure yet, Grandpa Bob has teamed up with Jesse’s Journey, an organization that has raised over $6 million for duchenne muscular dystrophy research.
Facca has raised more than $700,000 dollars along his 4,000 km walk and met many affected by the disease, including a 19-year-old reaching the end of his life expectancy.
“He couldn’t do anything anymore so Quebec is coming out with a new law of euthanasia, they were contemplating going there because the boy says ‘it’s not worth it anymore’,” said Facca.
Most children with the disease have a hard time going up stairs and jumping, and may start using a wheelchair by the time they’re 12-years-old, like John Sykas’s grandson who sometimes uses a walker.
“He’s 14 now and it was detected when he was two-years-old. He started walking on his toes and he was a little bit more lethargic than a normal two-year-old,” said Sykas.
Grandpa Bob will reach Winnipeg on Wednesday and is hoping more donations will pour in at JessesJourney.com.
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