Thank you for visiting The KCL MRC team's Just Giving page for Annabelle's Dream. We are taking part in a crazy 10km, 100 obstacle course at Battersea power station raising money for The Tree of Hope Children's Charity, on behalf of my friend's little girl Annabelle.

Annabelle is 3 years old and was born 12 weeks' prematurely. Soon after, she was diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy as a result of her premature birth. The biggest symptom in Annabelle is that she has a really intense tightness in the muscles in her legs (just like heavy duty elastic bands). This means that she is unable to walk unaided and suffers from regular pain as a result of her tight muscles. 

She is a really bright, bubbly, loving, cuddly little girl and so very brave. She only ever gets grumbly after long, intensive periods of physio.

There is an operation that would help Annabelle walk, called selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR). This is a 5 hour neuro-surgical operation that would directly target and eliminate the nerve rootlets in Annabelle's spinal cord that cause the spasticity in her legs. The process would leave only the properly-firing nerve rootlets intact and would permanently eliminate the spasticity in her muscles.

The best place in the world for SDR is the St Louis Children's Hospital, Missouri in America. There, Dr Park has performed over 2,500 operations and his success rate is 100%. That's 100%. Amazingly, every single SDR operation he has ever performed has succeeded in improving the child's life forever.

The price of the SDR operation is very high. Once the operation itself, aftercare, travel and accommodation costs are taken into account, it will cost £55,000. We would love to be able to raise £1000 to really help our friends to achieve this target so please dig deep!

The Tree of Hope help fund specialist medical surgery, treatment and therapy to children in order to free them from suffering and to give them a better quality of life in their young lives. They have helped many other children raise money for SDR. With their support and your help and donations, Annabelle's dream can come true too.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to The Tree of Hope and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for The Tree of Hope and for Annabelle.

Thank you.