Zoe Murphy Bannon Appeal

6 year old Zoe was born with spastic diplegic Cerebral Palsy, this was caused by moderate to severe PVL brain injury. We will never know how Zoe acquired this brain injury however medics say it may have been caused by an infection before birth.

Zoe's family were told she would never walk, talk or sit unaided. They were told to manage their expectations with Zoes limited abilities

Fast forward 6 years, Zoe had a very successful SDR surgery in St. Louis children's hospital in Missouri. Zoes body has been released of most of the spasticity that was restricting Zoes life in such a big way. Since this surgery Zoe has gone from strength to strength defying all the odds set against her. Zoe is the most charismatic, intelligent, funny and determined little girl you could meet. She attends main stream school and is determined to live an independent life

Unfortunately Zoes journey doesn't end there, As she had hip dysplasia as a baby her hips where always a weak area for her. As she has grown over the years, her cerebral palsy has caused bone deformities to her hips, knees and feet.

Zoe was comfortably walking in her Kaye walker after SDR surgery but unfortunately her muscles continued to tightening while her bones continued to grow. Over the space of a year we have seen her walking pattern deteriorate, and upon consulting with her neurosurgeon and Orthopaedic surgery in St.Louis our fears were confirmed.

Zoe has what is severe antiversion femoral and needs surgery to correct this, She also needs a surgery called bilateral gastrocnemius recessions. This will lengthen her tendons and muscles in her calf area, her team in America have agreed to do both these surgeries together, which means just one anesthetic and one recovery, making things a little easier on Zoe.

Without these surgeries all of Zoes progress that she has worked so hard to make over the last 3 years will be lost and she will be refined to her wheelchair. Her team are eager to get these surgeries done to prevent any further regression, they have even given us a date for Oct 24th. Of course we do not believe this will be possible to achieve in such a short time frame.

We have spoke with her team here in Ireland, they agree she needs this surgery but they want to wait until her teenage years because in their eyes "Zoe is not a walker" therefore the deterioration will not affect her as much as someone who walks independently. Us as her family disagree completely, they also are not willing to do both surgeries together and only offering for us to put Zoe back into a spica body cast. Zoe has walked unaided in water for the first and continues to improve on this, from there we believe she can do it on land with just more confidence needed, we are not giving up on our wee warrior.

We have never looked back from having SDR it completely changed everything for Zoe, these now necessary surgeries are not a reflection on SDR it's just an unfortunate development of life with Cerebral Palsy

Thank you for reading and if you can help in any way we would be more than delighted