A mother whose seven-year-old daughter is walking unaided for the first time in her life has told BBC News it has left her “overwhelmed” by emotion.
Sally Morton’s daughter has spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy affecting her ability to move her legs. But Jasmine has now managed 30 steps unaided. A video showing her reaching 16 steps has been posted on Facebook.
“It’s a place we were unsure we’d ever get to and hard to put into words,” Sally, 34, told BBC News. Back in 2016, Sally, from Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, fundraised more than £60,000 ($77,000) in less than a year to pay for a selective dorsal rhizotomy operation to reduce the stiffness in Jasmine’s legs.
This was after the opportunity to have an operation on the NHS via a trial fell through. Without the donations for her daughter’s treatment, Sally believes Jasmine would now “be full time in her wheelchair”.
But two years on from her operation, at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, and thanks to regular physiotherapy, Jasmine is now getting around on her own two feet.
Moved by the generosity of strangers, Sally decided to use social media to show everyone supporting Jasmine how she was progressing.
