AJ Perez, 36, from Austin, Texas, was diagnosed with Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) in March 2020. He discusses what more awareness about FA would mean in terms of diagnosis and treatment.

If there was more awareness, I think for me the thing that would change would just be finding [diagnoses] maybe a little bit sooner, because it was like a 10-year battle of trying to find out what was wrong. So if there was more awareness throughout the medical field that would help in a way where others aren’t struggling to find out what’s wrong with them.

Also, the more you know about something, the more likely people are to develop medicines that could eventually help people. I know right now we have one medicine, drug, that was already approved but there could be a lot more right now instead of just one. And instead of only being available right now, it could have been available a while ago. So, that’s the important of awareness in the medical field, I think.