To keep her legs supple and fully stretched Francesca undergoes daily physiotherapy and weekly hydrotherapy sessions. Francesca loves swimming and horse riding too.

Thanks to our ongoing fundraising, Francesca regularly attends a dynamic physiotherapy centre in Oxford called 'Footsteps' for an intensive three week programme using 'The Spider'. It is always a challenging time, physically, mentally and emotionally but Francesca never complains and remains highly motivated and committed throughout. See the Footsteps link below for more information:

https://www.footsteps.ltd.uk/index.html

Despite her daily challenges Francesca is a very bright and bubbly little girl with lots of friends and a few boyfriends too! She attends a local mainstream primary school, St Gregory's where she is a very popular member of the community.

Francesca has lots of interests including art, drama and reading. Her favourite author is Enid Blyton and she loves watching Blue Peter, she is the proud owner of a Silver badge! Francesca loves going to Brownies and is in the Hedgehogs!

Francesca enjoys boundless love and support from a huge extended family. Although she has no brothers or sisters she has over twenty cousins and is never short of a playmate. All of the family work hard to ensure she is always included, whatever the activity. Francesca has tobogganed, para-glided, dune surfed with the rest of us!

Francesca's dream is to be to able to run and dance like all her friends. It's such a simple dream and we feel we are failing her because we can't make that happen. The SDR surgery is our chance to make Francesca's wish come true!

Francesca has a beautiful baby cousin called Elsa who is nine months old. Francesca has told me that when she returns from having her surgery in the USA she will learn to walk with Elsa, "we'll do it together Mummy".