Hi everyone, Cora's mum and myself are attempting to complete the Manchester half marathon (13.1 miles) on the 20th May. This is to help raise £50,000 for little Cora's operation so she can walk unaided. If you would like to sponser me i would be most grateful and as the saying goes...every little helps. Thank you.

Here's Cora's story:

My friend Karen's daughter Cora was born in Nov 2015 at 31 weeks – 9 weeks premature. It was quite a difficult birth so she didn’t have the best start but following a 6 week stay in the Special Care Baby Unit at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (North Wales), she was discharged on Christmas Eve. She appeared to be developing well & remained healthy for the first 12 months of her life, however, shortly after her first birthday, Karen & Gareth began to worry that she couldn’t roll over or crawl. An MRI scan in Feb 2017 revealed that she had brain damage in the area that controls muscle tone & movement in the arms & legs – resulting in her being diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy. This means that her leg muscles are stiff, resulting in her walking on her toes & she is unable to stand or walk independently.

As you can imagine, the last 12 months have been pretty tough as they’ve come to terms with her disability but there is an operation she can have called Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) which will permanently remove the spasticity from her muscles & will hopefully mean that she will eventually be able to walk on her own, flat-footed! The only snag is that the operation isn’t available on the NHS, however, there is a doctor in St. Louis Hospital in the USA who is the pioneer of this surgery but it’s going to cost us in excess of £50,000 to get her there! They are also exploring the possibility of having it done (privately) in the UK, but again the cost is very similar. The outcomes for children having had this surgery is amazing & completely life-changing in terms of their mobility, so we really want to give Cora this chance.