Every year, the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) has Friedreich’s Ataxia Awareness Day on the third Saturday in May. It is not an official or nationally recognized day – but a day that the FA community spreads the word about this disease to help raise awareness. It is usually benchmarked by a social media campaign. To help raise awareness, I reached out to Texas Governor Greg Abbott to have Saturday, May 16th, 2015 officially declared Friedreich’s Ataxia Awareness

Every year, the third Saturday in May is Friedreich’s Ataxia Awareness day. To help boost awareness this year, I petitioned Texas Governor Greg Abbott to have Saturday, May 16th officially declared as Friedreich’s Ataxia Awareness Day in the great state of Texas. And guess what…. He did it! So, join me and the rest of the FA community in raising awareness for FA! The Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) is doing a great social media campaign that is fun and easy to be

Another RideATAXIA is in the books for Team Kendall – and what a fun event it was! We had a great turn-out at the ride and made a lot of new friends in the FA community. RideATAXIA has become very important to me, personally, because it is a good avenue to channel my energy when Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) is on my mind. It gives me such hope that there is a huge, nation-wide effort to raise awareness and funds to help find a cure for FA! Last year, FA was still new to my family

I am sure you have noticed that a lot of my pictures for RideATAXIA are of me on a recumbent trike. Wonder why? Well the answer is quite simple – because I have Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA). Most FA patients experience a lack of coordination that makes balancing difficult. In fact, my thrown-off balance is what made me visit a neurologist in the first place. My legs just didn’t cooperate like they used to and I was tripping and stumbling a lot more than I had a few years ago. Whe

When you donate to Team Kendall or sponsor any Team Kendall riders in RideATAXIA, 100% of your donations go straight to the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA). FARA is a national, public, 501(c)(3), non-profit, tax-exempt organization dedicated to curing Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) through research. FARA grants and activities provide support for basic and translational FA research, pharmaceutical/ biotech drug development, clinical trials, and scientific conferences. F

February 28th is National Rare Disease Day. Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) is a rare disease affecting approximately 5,000 people in the US and 15,000 people world-wide. Therefore, the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) has created a virtual event to raise awareness for FA! Join Team Kendall in the Move YOUR Way for Rare Disease Day virtual event on Facebook, and post photos of yourselves, family, friends, coworkers and classmates moving under your own power. Here is how

Initiated in 2007, Ride Ataxia has raised invaluable awareness for Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) and over $3 million in support of FA research grants in just 8 short years! Functioning as a program of the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA), Ride Ataxia offers challenging and family fun bike rides at locations all across the USA. Ride Ataxia started as a crazy idea that is now empowering thousands and changing the outlook on research for a rare, life-shortening disease. I

I found out that I had Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) on August 19, 2013. At first, I thought that the entire future I had planned for my husband Kyle and I was gone. I thought that I would physically deteriorate quickly and have a poor quality of life, and most sad of all, I thought that having children was out of the question. After meeting with several specialists, I learned more about my specific case of FA and was told “if you wanted to have a family before you were diagnosed

As you probably recall, we just passed the year anniversary of my Friedreich's Ataxia diagnosis (August 19th). To reflect on the past year and how far we have come, I wrote a blog post entitled "What a Difference A Year Makes." Through the power of social media, my post made its way over to the folks at the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA). Felicia with FARA contacted me a few weeks ago regarding this blog post. She had passed it along to Jen Farmer, the Executive

What a difference a year makes! On August 19, 2013, I was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA). At the time, I knew nothing of the disease except that it was serious and currently had no cure. I felt so hopeless and afraid because I didn’t know any better. When I first learned that I had FA, I thought that my life was over. All I remember from those first few days after the diagnosis was the scary information I read on the internet which was full of bleak information and o

A new friend of mine, Lora, is living with Rheumatoid Arthritis. However, she is not letting the chronic illness hold her back! She has a daily blog where she posts inspirational words of wisdom. She graciously offered me the opportunity to write a guest blog post to help raise awareness for Friedreich’s Ataxia! To read my post, click here. And don’t forget to follow her blog for a daily dose of inspiration. #teamkendall #friedreichsataxia #symptoms

The Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA), just released the new summer edition of the FARA newsletter- The Advocate! I recently had the honor and pleasure of speaking with Kyle Bryant, the Founder & Director of Ride Ataxia. Ride Ataxia is a fundraising program of FARA. We discussed Team Kendall’s first appearance in the 2014 Ride Ataxia Dallas for the newsletter! You can see the write up on page 9. There is also a lot of great information about what is going on in the

Team Kendall participated in our very first Ride Ataxia on March 29, 2014. All I can say is WOW! What an amazing day. I wanted to get involved in Ride Ataxia because I have always been a very active individual and this was an event that I could participate in alongside my friends, family and fellow FA community. I was beyond blessed to have an incredible network of friends and family who kept asking “what can I do to help?” The ride was a great answer! I told everyone I knew

Initiated by Kyle Bryant in 2007, Ride Ataxia has raised invaluable awareness for Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) and over $ 2.5 million in support of FA research grants in just 7 short years. Bryant’s inspiration spurs from his diagnosis at age 17 and the discovery that he could travel long distances under his own power on a recumbent tricycle. Fueled by the passion to do more for himself and the FA community, Bryant and his family completed a 2,500 mile bike ride from San Diego to

As we know, Friedreich's Ataxia (FA) is a genetic disease. You have FA if both of your parents passed on a damaged allele to you. Every FA patient experiences the disease differently - there are different onset ages, symptoms and severities. What we have learned is that FA symptoms are caused by low cellular levels of a substance called frataxin, due to insufficient activity of frataxin genes in our DNA. Frataxin is a protein which our bodies produce naturally. Frataxin

Hi friends and family, Welcome to Team Kendall! Please take some time to look around the site. We have provided information about Friedreich's Ataxia, Kendall's personal journey, events that you can participate in and ways that you can help. Your support means more to us than you will ever know. If you ever have any questions, please let us know. There are many ways to get in touch with us, including: comments on blog posts, private messages and Facebook. Talk to you soon, Te