How the InvisaBrace Cerebral Palsy Story Began — and Why We Need You
- faithovercp
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
By Michael Urbanowicz - Faith Over CP
InvisaBrace Cerebral Palsy Story: How We Invented It to Save Our Daughter
If you’ve followed our family for a while, you know my daughter Sophie was born with cerebral palsy. When she got her first pair of AFOs (ankle‑foot orthoses), my wife Brittany and I did what every parent would do—we tried to make life feel as “normal” as possible for her. That meant something as simple as getting shoes she loved. We went to nine different shoe stores in one day. Nine. Not one pair of shoes would fit over those big plastic braces. We drove home with a crying little girl who just wanted to wear what Mommy wore, and two parents who felt like we had failed at the most basic task: getting our daughter a pair of shoes. That day broke my heart—and it lit a fire that still hasn’t gone out.
Cutting Up a Sandal… and Accidentally Starting a Movement
One night, after another meltdown over shoes, I grabbed an old, ugly sandal, took a knife, and started cutting. What came out of that crazy “dad in the kitchen with scissors” moment was the first version of what we now call the InvisaBrace—a soft insert that hides inside a shoe, lifts the toes, and supports Sophie’s feet without the giant plastic shells on the outside.
Fast‑forward: that rough little idea got refined, patented, and tested in a gait lab at Dayton Children’s Hospital. Compared to her traditional AFOs, Sophie walked almost 15% faster with better symmetry and balance. But the number that matters to me is one: one smiling little girl who finally felt like every other kid in her class. And that’s where Afshin comes in.
The Engineer on the Other Side of the World
I didn’t meet Afshin in a boardroom or at a medical conference. I met him on a freelance website. He was logging in from halfway around the world, in a country under heavy sanctions where talented engineers are often blocked from basic tools we take for granted—like buying a 3D printer or even paying for software with a regular credit card. He and his wife had both studied mechanical engineering, but the cost of immigration and politics kept them trapped. To work with me, he had to get creative. He set up accounts through relatives overseas, used multiple VPNs to reach WhatsApp, and routinely spent a considerable chunk of his income just to stay connected. But when we started working together on Sophie’s brace, something was immediately apparent: This man wasn’t just good. He was brilliant.
While big‑name companies struggled for months to solve the blister and pressure problems on Sophie’s feet, Afshin was iterating designs overnight. He taught himself new software, new simulation tools, and even dived into my crazy AI ideas to model gait and foot pressure. Together—half a world apart—we created the modern InvisaBrace and InvisaSole, the tech now helping kids like Sophie run, jump, and play without looking “different.”
When Work Becomes Family
Somewhere along the way, Afshin stopped being “my engineer” and became my brother.
Sophie calls him her “engineering uncle.” He’s stayed up all night on video calls to troubleshoot one child’s brace. He’s poured his heart into each design like that child was his own. When things were hard here—lawsuits, money tight, feeling like the world didn’t care—he reminded me to keep going. And when things were hard there, he trusted me the same way. At one point, his family situation became dangerous. With money I wired for work, he quietly rented his mother a safe home and helped her escape an abusive environment. She cried for hours when she realized an employer on the other side of the world had given her son the chance to protect her and stand on his own two feet. Another time, war and shortages hit his region. Power went out for six hours a day. The government announced drinking water might run out in two weeks. Afshin joked that all he could do was laugh, but behind the emojis was real fear and absolute pressure. He told me he’d even talked to smugglers at one point when things felt hopeless. I kept telling him, “Brother, I don’t care where you’re from. I care who you are. You being from there, surviving what you’ve survived—that’s what made you into the person I trust with my daughter’s feet.”
He wrote back that our friendship—and the chance to work on these inventions—felt like a blessing from God amid the chaos.
The InvisaBrace Cerebral Palsy Story: Why This Mission Matters
This entire journey has become the InvisaBrace cerebral palsy story — a mission to help children walk with confidence and avoid surgery or Botox.
What Afshin Has Already Built for Our Kids
Here’s just a taste of what Afshin has engineered from a tiny apartment under rolling blackouts:
Advanced InvisaBrace & InvisaSole models that lift the toes 10–30 degrees to fight toe‑walking and foot drop without injections or surgery.
Custom insoles for kids as young as 18 months, using video‑based gait analysis to set toe‑lift angles, arch height, and heel cups for each child.
A framework for the InvisaBody System—a full‑body orthotic concept that takes what we learned from Sophie’s feet and applies it to knees, hips, and spine alignment for kids with CP and other conditions.
AI‑assisted workflows so that, one day, parents and therapists can upload a video of a child walking and receive a custom, 3D‑printed orthotic design within days instead of months.
If you’ve ever seen Sophie running down the hallway “like Forrest Gump when the braces fall off,” you’ve seen Afshin’s fingerprints on every step.
Why We Need to Bring Him Here
Right now, Afshin is still stuck in a system that doesn’t value what he’s building. He’s subject to sanctions, internet crackdowns, and even the threat of being pulled into a military he wants no part of. At the same time, we’re trying to launch Faith Over CP, scale up InvisaBrace/InvisaSole, and serve hundreds of thousands of children like Sophie across the United States.
I can’t do this alone!
We plan to relocate our family to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, set up a small mobility and gait lab, and hire Afshin as our lead biomechanical and AI engineer. Here’s what that unlocks:
Faster, cheaper custom orthotics for kids with CP, autism‑related toe‑walking, and other neuro‑mobility challenges.
New solutions for diabetic foot ulcers and amputation prevention.
Rural access: telehealth gait analysis for families who can’t drive to big hospitals.
Real U.S. jobs in engineering, PT/OT support, and manufacturing—built around a mission, not just profit.
Afshin doesn’t just make products; he embodies the story we want our kids to see: that talent and kindness can rise above politics, borders, and fear.
What the $9,000 Covers
We’re raising $9,000 specifically to cover Afshin’s path to the United States:
Immigration attorney & filing fees
Required translations, document prep, and government costs
Medicals, travel, and initial relocation support so he and his wife can safely land and get to work
Every dollar beyond that will go directly into building out our small gait/orthotic workshop so we can serve more families faster.
A giant corporation doesn’t back faith over CP. It’s just a dad, a mom, my son, and a little girl who loves pink boots, and an engineer on the other side of the world who refused to give up on her.
How You Can Help
Donate. Use the donation form on this page or our PayPal link to give whatever you can. $10, $50, $100—all of it moves Afshin one step closer to safety and puts us one step closer to serving the next child.
Share this blog and our video on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, email, group chats—anywhere people might care about kids, disability, or just good people trying to do good work.
Connect. If you know immigration attorneys, grant writers, PT/OT clinics, or hospitals who should hear about what we’re building, please introduce us.
Pray & Cheer Us On. If you’re a person of faith, pray for open doors and protection for Afshin’s family. If you’re not, keep us in your thoughts and help us spread the word.
One Dad, One Engineer, and a Quarter Million Kids
Currently, there are more than a quarter of a million kids like Sophie in the United States alone—kids who are told they’ll always need injections, surgery, or bulky braces to take a step. Sophie is proof that it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. We’ve already seen what happens when a dad with a broken heart over nine shoe stores meets a brilliant engineer who refuses to let war, sanctions, and distance stop him from building something better. Now I’m asking you to step into that story with us. Help me bring Afshin here. Help us build the lab. Help us change what’s possible for the next child who just wants to wear the same shoes as Mom.
Thank you for reading, for sharing, and for believing that a little girl in pink boots and an engineer halfway around the world can, together, change the world—one step at a time.
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