This is our beautiful daughter Poppy. She is the most kind hearted and fun loving 10 year old. Poppy has Cerebral Palsy & Epilepsy. Over the last three years Poppy has had seizures every day, most day’s multiple times. More recently she's been losing consciousness resulting in frequent trips to hospital. It's heartbreaking watching her struggle, not only with seizures, but also the debilitating side effects from the cocktail of medication she takes to try & control them.

As an infant Poppys motor skills were very delayed, she stuggled with toileting, crawling and walking. When she was three years old an MRI indicated she had two areas of brain damage and we were given the diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy. We were also told that Poppy may develop Epilepsy later on in life; unfortunately this came true when Poppy turned four. For the first two years it was controlled with medication but sadly her body became resistant to them, and the battle to control her sezuires has been ongoing ever since.

We have fought so hard to get Poppy the care she needs, taking her case to the House of Commons, which finally lead to an appointment with the Neurological team in Leeds. Unfortunately we were told that due to Poppy’s extensive brain damage (Polymicrogyria) and her type of epilepsy, she is not eligible for life changing open brain surgery. After years of pushing for support the realisation that Poppy epilepsy will be lifelong has hit us hard, but we are determined to keep going.

Last year Poppy had VNS surgery. This so far hasn't had the impact we hoped for. It only works for two thirds of patients and vary in reduction in sezuires. Very few gain complete sezuire freedom, however even a reduction in sezuires would be amazing.

Many people have asked to support us, thus far we felt we could overcome Poppy’s challenges ourselves. However, now we realise we need as much support as possible to make Poppys future healthier and happier.

Thank you

Team Woodhams