Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

My name is Phoebe and I am 3 years old.  I live in Lostock Hall, Preston.  I suffer from a rare neurological condition called Moebius Syndrome.  I am one of only 200 sufferers in the UK.  My condition causes facial paralysis so if I met you I could not smile at you or frown at you.  I can't blink so I have to have special drops in my eyes and I cannot eat as my tongue and the mucles in my mouth don't work properly.  Eating is a very scary thing for me to do because I am at risk of choking so I'm fed through a special tube into my tummy.  My condition also causes low muscle tone so even though I'm 3 years old now I cannot walk like my friends can.  I can crawl and I can sit up now and I have recently learnt to take a few steps with my walking frame.

I am lucky because since April 2011 I have been attending The Legacy Rainbow House in Mawdesley which is a charity that offers specialist therapy to children like me, with disabilities and brain injuries.  The Legacy Rainbow House is the only place in the North that offers this therapy and is vitally important to me and to the other 80 children who attend therapy sessions.

When I started at The Legacy I was sitting unaided but since then the kind people at The Legacy Rainbow House have been working very hard with me.  In less than a year they have taught me to crawl, to pull myself to standing and I am now taking a few steps with my walking frame.  They have even taught me to eat small amounts of yoghurt from a spoon!

The first three winters of my life were spent in and out of hospital with life threatening chest infections.  Because I wasn't mobile a simple cold quickly turned into a severe chest infection which meant I was often on various forms of ventilation, critically ill.  Thanks to the staff at The Legacy Rainbow House I am now up and about much more and I have not had to go into hospital once this winter.  Father Christmas actually visited me at home this year instead of in hospital!

The therapy sessions at The Legacy Rainbow House have changed my life and that of my family but now all of that might come to an end unless you can help me.  We have just been told that the charity is running extremely low on funds and unless I raise £3000 by April thier services will have to be cut and I will not be able to access the therapy that I so desperately need.

We are working so hard to get me walking independently ready for when I start school in September.  I really want to be able to run around the playground with my friends and I want to learn to eat so that I can sit and have school dinners with my friends.  I don't want to give up now when I have come so far so I am pleading for your help.

My mum, dad and my family and friends are getting involved in various events to try and raise the money that I need.  Please support them by donating to my page or sponsoring them using this page.  All the money will go The Legacy Rainbow House on my behalf.

Please, please, please donate as much as you can, every pound will help me achieve my goal of £3000 so that my therapy sessions can continue and so that I can achieve my goal of walking to school.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Thank you for reading my story and thank you for donating, it means so much to me and my family.

Love Phoebe xxx