Emily Benson is a normal, happy sixth grader — blessed with great spirits and big smiles, vital friendships and typically overactive thumbs. Over Christmas break she’s been sleeping late, playing video games with her brother and listening to her iPod.

“She’s into Legos and nail polish. She can hang with her girlfriends and text all day long” — as appears to be the requirement for 12-year-old girls these days, her father Eric said.

But other than attending King’s Way Christian School, Emily doesn’t get out of the house much. For everything that’s happily normal about her life, there’s this one complication: Emily was born with spina bifida and secondary scoliosis. Spina bifida is a relatively common and often serious birth defect caused when the spinal cord is not fully enclosed and protected by the sheath that’s supposed to surround it. Scoliosis is curvature of the spine.

Emily is paralyzed from the small of her back down — from the L4 and L5 vertebrae, Eric said — and so the smart and gregarious child can’t go anywhere without help. She’s got both manual and powered wheelchairs, but these don’t easily fit into the family minivan. Eric and Triann, Emily’s mother, have been obliged to lift and carry their daughter between chair and car — and then to go back to lug the wheelchair along too.

The manual wheelchair is easier to bring along but far more difficult for Emily to use; the powered one is easier but weighs approximately 350 pounds, Eric said.