Tiffany Wedekind, 46, has the body of a woman over 300 years old.
In Columbus, Ohio, she began losing her hair and teeth in her twenties. Doctors performed a DNA test and found a mutation in the LMNA gene: progeria, Benjamin Button disease. An abnormal protein, progerin, deteriorates her cells eight times faster than those of anyone else. Most children with this diagnosis do not reach age 13. Tiffany developed it two decades later than usual, and today she is believed to be the longest-living survivor on record in the world.
Her brother Chad received the same diagnosis at almost the same time. He died in 2012 from complications of the disease. She watched him deteriorate and decided she would not live in fear: she does yoga, rides a bicycle, and treats every meal as if it were part of the treatment. She is now trying Lornafarnib, a drug that could be the first approved treatment for progeria. ‘I could die at any moment,’ she says, ‘I treat my life as if it were my playground.’