PHOENIX — An East Valley teenager who loves sports cars got the surprise of a lifetime when dozens of Corvettes and other high-performance cars rolled past his house in a special birthday parade.
Liam, who turned 18 last Saturday, was born at 37 weeks as a seemingly healthy baby, his mother, Megan Marshall, said. But as he grew, she noticed he was slow to reach developmental milestones and had lost use of his right hand. His pediatrician suspected he had suffered a stroke. An MRI confirmed that Liam had right hemiplegia, where he was missing the back left quadrant of his brain matter, likely due to a stroke in utero. Doctors warned that he was at high risk for various disabilities.
By 6 months old, Liam was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. In the years that followed, he also received diagnoses of Lennox-Gastaut syndrome—a rare and severe form of epilepsy—autism, and a genetic disorder. He is both developmentally and physically delayed, his mother said…