Ex-Racehorse Fittipaldi Brings Movement Back to a Young Woman's Life

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Tallulah Becza-Levitt was just four years old when her preschool teachers noticed that she was limping. Her parents took her to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), one of the country's leading pediatric specialists and received a diagnosis no parent should ever have to hear: neurofibromatosis, an incurable condition in which tumors grow uncontrollably on the body's nerves, which has left her with a disability. Now, she has rediscovered the joy of movement on the back of a 21-year-old former racehorse named Fittipaldi.

Transcript

00:00Lula Bexalevitt was just four years old when she was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis,

00:06an incurable condition in which tumors grow uncontrollably in the body.

00:10She has had seven surgeries since that time, one of which damaged the nerves in her leg,

00:15leaving her with mobility challenges.

00:18Now, she's found one place where she can move just like everyone else,

00:22on the back of a 21-year-old former racehorse turned therapeutic riding horse

00:26named Fittipaldi, or Fiddy, who was helping her to heal both her physical and emotional scars.

00:33From the waist up, you can't really tell I have a disability.

00:37So a lot of people like to ask me, you know, what happened to your leg?

00:41There's no right way to respond to it.

00:43So someone that's having trouble with their walking or if they're in a wheelchair,

00:48you can put them on the horse and that gait, that motion,

00:53sets them on top of the world because they can walk again.

00:57They can actually walk again through this motion of the horse.

01:03When a friend came up with the idea of riding,

01:06it immediately gave me a jolt of excitement

01:10because I've sort of been looking for some sort of athletic outlet

01:16and we tried to play pickleball and it didn't work

01:19and that was very frustrating and you become hard on yourself

01:21for things that you can't help.

01:23So being able to ride has given me so much joy

01:27and so much more confidence and just overall excitement about life.

01:34Fiddy is wonderful.

01:36He raced 25 times.

01:39He has made the transition now to a therapeutic riding horse.

01:44You really do adapt, but, you know, there are things that are just a lot harder

01:48and you don't do it the way that other kids do it.

01:50So it makes you feel different and you don't, nobody wants to feel different.

01:54And when I'm on the horse, it feels so much more freeing

01:58because I don't have to use a crutch or a brace.

02:02The horse is moving how I tell it to move.

02:05It's a great feeling to do it with another being, right?

02:09Like the horse is supporting you and you're supporting the horse and leading the horse.

02:13So it's such a great bond.

02:16Tallulah is, she's amazing.

02:18She loves Fiddy already.

02:21She loves being here.

02:22She loves the idea of being able to do a sport that she could excel at.

02:28You can get that emotionally.

02:30She gets a lot of just love from Fiddy and gives it to him.

02:35This is a pretty big change for my life.

02:38I think I had put myself in a box a little bit before this.

02:42It's negating a lot of my life where I've felt like,

02:46okay, I can't do this because it's going to be harder

02:50or people are going to look at me weird or I'm going to have to do it differently.

02:53There's a freedom that I hadn't experienced before

02:56with just doing it and being able to do it in a way that I want.

03:02So it just reinforces how great of an animal horses are.

03:06The benefits for every type of human they can provide,

03:12I think is really special.

03:13Very, very special.

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