When Katy was six weeks old our GP noticed that she had a bit of a squint and referred her to our local hospital. Fast forward three and a bit years to 2018 and Katy was diagnosed with a life limiting mitochondrial disease called Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex Deficiency. This means she is unable to derive the energy that her body needs from carbohydrates. This has caused damage to her brain which means that she has severe learning difficulties, hearing loss, difficulty seeing and can't walk or talk. She is however, a lively and very determined little girl with a big personality! She has already taught herself to sit up and is trying hard to crawl and to learn to use her mini-wheelchair. She loves music and laughing with her brother. You can keep up with Katy's exploits at: https://www.facebook.com/What-Katy-did-next-160611411220223/

We are adapting our house so that we can continue to care for Katy at home as she gets older and heavier. We want to adapt our garages to give her a ground floor bedroom and wet room, add level ramped access to the front and back, widen doorways and install hoists to lift her. Katy has recieved a disabled facilities grant from our local council, but this only covers a small proportion of the cost of the works so we have a big funding gap to fill. Alongside these adaptions we also need to do work to bring the house up to modern standards (it's barely been touched since it was build in the 50's) - we will of course be funding these improvements ourselves.

Thank you so much for your support - it means a lot.