CMN MIRACLE CHILD: Parker Strobeck

Meet Parker Strobeck 13, and feeling like the big man on campus.

"I guess the fact that I can say, hey, I have my own dog, like my very own dog to love and play with," says Strobeck. "Isn't that right."

He just got Jurina a few weeks ago and boy, how life has changed.

"She can get my shoes and bring them straight to me," says Strobeck. "She plays fetch unlike our other dogs."

Other than his wheels, Parker says he feels like any other teenager. Except one thing, he can quickly put life into perspective.

"Sometimes Ethan is like, you know, you really look at the world in a different kind of way," said mother Kerri Strobeck. "And to be honest, I feel like I kind of do."

Cherishing each and every moment his family has together.

"He would not walk upstairs, and we were like other kids his age are doing these things, why isn't he," said Strobeck. "He actually started noticing this when he was 2.5... and it took us a year to get that diagnosis."

That was a decade ago. Mom Kerri got the news.

"Parker has Duschend Muscular Dystrophy and he was diagnosed in 2007 and it wasn't until 2012 that we really found out what Children's Miracle Network does," said Strobeck.

That made 2012 a good year. Getting help, from people just like you, was a game changer.

"it took a weight off our shoulders knowing that okay, we don't have to worry about coming up with extra money to go stay in a hotel one or two nights and gas all the way up and back to St. Louis.," said Strobeck. "We try to very much take our life one day at a time and not focus on the whirlwind. Like in six months we have to go back to the doctor, and what if this or that or whatever, you know."