This brave little girl is enduring more seizures due to lockdown - but she still finds time to help other sick children

The seven-year-old, who has a brain tumour, was due to have hear 10th operation but it was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Her dad Paul said she is wiped out and can’t remember a thing after each seizure she has at home.

Paul described one of them where Lyla ‘dropped to the floor while she was getting ready’.

“She was biting down hard on her teeth as if they were ready to snap. It is horrible and when she wakes up, her mouth is hurting because she has been biting so hard.”

Yet Lyla has never stopped thinking of others despite everything she is going through herself. Just look at what she has achieved.

* She has recorded her own personal video message for Colonel Tom Moore.

*l She has sent out hundreds of certificates to other people who had been brave in their own health battles.

* She posted a social media message to thank everyone who sent her messages of support when she was unwell, even though she was still recovering.

* And she even won a bet which meant her dad had to have his hair dyed pink after she got 100 shares and 1,000 likes on Tik Tok.

* And now there is her latest project which is a plan to help other children who, like her, have to face up to needles and operations in hospital. She has organised 500 stress balls to be sent to other poorly children and the video shows Lyla explaining this in her own words.

She has managed all of this during the lockdown,

Lyla has undergone life-threatening surgery, battled meningitis, been treated for hydrocephalus and had a shunt put into her head and that’s just in the last four years.

She was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2016 when she was just three.

She was recently due to undergo her 10th operation on her brain at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle but it had to be cancelled. Paul said the coronavirus would kill his daughter if she were to contract it.

But the effect of having more seizures is ‘taking its toll’, said Paul who is from Hartlepool. “They are picking up again.”

He described the effect as ‘like running two or three marathons back to back’.

Paul, 35, wife Kirsty, 34, who now live in Ushaw Moor and their family are supporting the Brain Tumour Research charity to raise awareness of the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40.

Paul added: “At the beginning, we thought it was epilepsy but we now know that the seizures are caused by pressure and pressure leads to brain damage.”

“For every seizure she has, it is chipping away at something.”

Yet Lyla has never stopped being positive and said she was ‘loving’ the lockdown because she ‘hates going out.’

“The positives are that we have all been together and had some time together,” said Paul who is in the Army but who is in lockdown until further notice.

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