Even though they share an extensive medical background, Tiffany and Taylor Hoffbeck admitted they were caught off guard with this one.
Taylor, who used to be an ICU nurse, and Tiffany, a pre-med student at the University of South Dakota, did a double-take three years ago upon learning of the news that their newborn son, Riggs, was diagnosed with Cornelia de Lange syndrome, a developmental disorder present from birth and one usually not inherited that can affect many parts of the body.
“We both looked at each other like, ‘What is that?” Taylor said after the birth of their son in 2020. “Neither one of us had ever heard about it. You do your research and stuff … it’s a very case-by-case basis. There are very extreme ends of it — from basically debilitating to the other end where you’re going to be on the autism spectrum. There’s behavioral things — it’s a weird disease because the sky is the limit both ways.”
See more in this week’s paper!