Iam a dwarf. God made me this way. I’m little, just like He made you have brownhair and blue eyes. 

 

Basedon birth records, it’s estimated that there are at least 15,000 people withdwarfism in the United States. And there are more than 200 different types ofdwarfism. What these people have in common is their unique application of askill that every human being learns in one way or another: how to adapt to theworld around you, regardless of who or what or how big the world thinks youare. 

 

Susie , at 3’10”, has the most common form called achondroplasia. Susie’sachondroplasia came from a mutation in a gene from her father. Her parentsand brothers are all average sized. And when she was born in West Texas in1961, her mother got some sage advice from her grandmother. 

 

Susie:“Take her home, love her.” And my mother had no doubt. She just needed thatreassurance from her mother. Here we are, you know, 45 years later. 

 

Athome in Maryland, Susie’s own family has gone to extraordinary lengths toextend that philosophy. They adopted a young dwarf named Suscha from a Russian orphanage. 

 

Mark(Susie’s Husband): They brought this little girl in and she walked in, and thislittle girl was looking down at her feet like this and she just looked up everyonce [in] a while and we both just, right at that moment, fell in love. It wasquite a powerful moment. 

 

Joshua is still another story from the Campbellfamily. He is Susie and Mark’s 9-year-old biological son. And he already towersover his mother because he is not a dwarf. He is a kid of average height who hasabsorbed the unusual diversity in his family in his own way. 

 

Suscha’stwo front teeth are missing. That’s normal for a 6-year-old. But because of thedesign of her jaw, her tongue also gets in the way of learning to pronouncewords. When she’s an adult, her skull will, in fact, grow larger thanaverage. With Suscha, there are also unanswered questions. She has a form ofdwarfism that is unknown to doctors, complicated by the fact that she wasabandoned and no family history is available for her. Her legs are not like atypical dwarf’s. She stands and walks on her toes in a kind of painful half crouch. Next year, Suscha is scheduled to have surgery in hopes of correctingthe problem. In the meantime, the Campbells have given her a life in a suburban neighborhood where she can be a kid. And the Campbells can only mapher future one day at a time. 

 

To complete thisremarkable family portrait, there is Mark, who is a systems analyst with theSocial Security Administration. He has still another type of dwarfism, muchmore rare called hypochondroplasia. At 4’7”, Mark is taller than most otherdwarfs. His body proportions are closer to an average human’s, but his arms aredisproportionately short.

 

Reporter: When you think of your family and what makesyour family unique, does height even enter into that equation?

Susie: Uhm-uhm. We are a family. We’re a mother,father, a son and a daughter. I take them to school. They clean their room. Idiscipline them. We’re just like any other family. No different.