Kingston Robinson gives it his all, whether it's playing a little one-on-one or it's fighting a disease that left him paralyzed.
His fight started a year-and-a-half ago when Kingston, now 4 years old, had recovered from bronchiolitis and strep throat.
One week after his recovery, Kingston could not move his arm, and doctors immediately thought he had a muscle injury.
"I just knew that something wasn't right. I went to work and I didn't feel comfortable about the whole thing. How could a muscle tear happen so quickly?" said Courtney Robinson, Kingston's mother.
She took him to the pediatrician's office the next day, where he displayed more red flags, such as being unable to retain information repeated to him and having an unsteady gait.
Kingston then collapsed in the exam room in front of his mother and the doctor, who advised the family get to the hospital immediately.
Tests inside the emergency room didn't offer a diagnosis to the the family.
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"For them not to know was, I think, more scary than knowing," Marcus Robinson said after seeing his son no longer able to walk. "All the things you thought for your kid, in a matter for seconds, was like, 'What in the world?' He won't be able to run with his buddies. His quality of life has changed, and that was the hard part."
Even in this desperate moment, luck was on their side.
The family was sent to Children's Health in Dallas, which is where Dr. Benjamin Greenberg researches rare forms of paralysis.
He diagnosed Kingston with transverse myelitis.
"The wires that connect the brain to the spinal cord are damaged, so the signals going to arm and legs don't get to the muscles, so the person is paralyzed," said Greenberg.
Transverse myelitis is a rare disorder that only affects about 200 to 300 children each year, according to Greenberg.
Little is known about how children develop the disorder, but in 2014, the year Kingston was sick, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a link between transverse myelitis and Enterovirus D-68, which in many children, appears as a common cold, similar to what Kingston dealt with days before the mystery paralysis.
"One of the things that's unique about this [Kingston's] variant of transverse myelitis is not only will kids be weak, but they're very floppy. A limb or two or four will be like wet spaghetti," said Greenberg.
His center is one of only two in the world dedicated to the disorder, however Kingston's chances for a full recovery were less than 30 percent.
The doctors' first approach to treatment failed, however their second approach to treatment resulted in improvement.
"He ended up taking like four or five steps. I just can't even describe that feeling. I knew that when he wasn't walking, that this was going to happen again, but I didn't know when and I didn't know how fast," said Courtney Robinson.
Doctors think Kingston's transverse myelitis wasn't as severe as the cases that leave children unable to recover.
After 20 days of therapy, Kingston was finally allowed to go home.
"We call him our miracle child," said Courtney Robinson. "He's jumping. He's doing flips. He's doing headstands."
Marcus Robinson said his son has learned an important lesson at an early age: give it your all, no matter the odds.
"I don't care how hard something is, hard work pays off. And he knows what hard work is," Marcus Robinson said.
To learn more about transverse myelitis, visit myelitis.org.
