An extreme genetic medical condition has left a woman gradually becoming a statue as all her muscles become bone.
Ashley Kurpiel
32-year-old Ashley Kurpiel from Peachtree City, Georgia, USA, suffers from Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), which affects just one out of every two million people.
It causes muscles, tendons, ligaments to spontaneously turn into new bones and is currently having no cure.
Kurpiel was misdiagnosed with cancer when she was just two-and-a-half and even had her arm amputated.
However, after five months after the crucial operation the doctors said that the tumour they thought was a carcinoma was actually a sign of FOP.
She said: “I am growing a second skeleton in a sense, becoming a human statue physically. Many others living with this lose all mobility, head to toe, and their jaws have locked shut. At 25 I lost mobility in my right leg and had to learn to live life and how to move around"
It has already claimed her right arm, the movement in her leg, and is slowly paralysing the rest of her body.