Life’s challenges cannot stop girl who keeps fighting back
Estel Farell-Roig meets a brave little girl who simply wants to get on and make the most of her extraordinary life
FOR Brooke Hacker, it wasn’t an easy start to life. She was born two weeks late and, while still in the womb, her heartbeat started to drop and they had to quickly deliver her with forceps.
When she was born, Brooke wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a heartbeat.
Doctors managed to resuscitate her but it took her 20 minutes to breathe independently.
She was put into intensive care for a month before they could take her home, said her mum Becky Hacker.
When she was three or fours weeks old Brooke was diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, caused by a lack of oxygen at birth.
At first the only signs of the condition were that she used to hold her thumbs inside her hands – which is a sign of brain damage – and that she couldn’t suck, so she had to be tube fed the first four months.
The first few years of Brooke’s life were difficult for the family. They had to constantly watch her.
“It was a traumatic childbirth,” said 27-year-old Mrs Hacker. “She started having seizures three days after being born, but they then stopped for a while.
“Children with cerebral palsy are likely to have epilepsy and I was told that, by the age of three, we would know whether she had epilepsy.
“Three days before her third birthday she started having seizures again.
“There are seizures that last up to an hour and a half so she is taking medication to control them.
“She doesn’t have seizures regularly, maybe once or twice a year. The medication is really helping her.”
For the past three years, Brooke, now aged seven, has also been going to Oxford for intensive physiotherapy three times a year.
The family are trying to raise funds for this and, so far, they have around £3,800. Mrs Hacker, from the Sketty area of Swansea, added: “It has been amazing, before she couldn’t crawl by herself.
“She can now crawl independently and our goal is to have her walking with a walking frame.
“She is doing really well at the moment.
“All we can do is try to improve her quality of life through the physiotherapy.”
Brooke is also learning Makaton - a language which uses signs and symbols to help people communicate - which helps her as sometimes she gets very frustrated when she can’t express herself.
She can only say a few words, such as dad. She only learnt to suck when she was six after the intensive physiotherapy.
Mrs Hacker continued: “Even if it has been hard, I would not change her for anything - she is brilliant.
“She loves everything; music, messy play...
“Brooke is happy, excited and bubbly. She always wants to learn new things and wants to participate.”
On their Justgiving page, they wrote: “Many times in the first month of her life we thought each visit would be our last with our baby girl but she proved doctors wrong every time and came out fighting.
“Since then Brooke has developed epilepsy and again we have nearly lost our little girl on a number of occasions.
“Through a family friend we learnt about Footsteps in Oxford, which is an intensive physiotherapy centre to help Brooke walk. “Their work is fantastic and results are outstanding, so we would like to raise as much as possible forJust4Children to keep sending Brooke there so she can have the independence she deserves.”
The family hasn’t been told Brooke’s condition is life-limiting, she said, but there is always the chance she could have a really bad seizure and die.
The mum said that, in Swansea, there is no support groups for children with cerebral palsy and that, in most parks, there is nothing for her to do as, for example, she can’t sit on a swing.
A spokesman for Swansea Council said that, last year, a special Ability Swing was added to Victoria Park.
The piece of specialist equipment allows children to play on the swing without having to leave their wheelchair and is the first of its kind in a public park in Swansea.
She loves everything; music, messy play... Brooke is happy, excited and bubbly. She always wants to learn new things and wants to participate BROOKE’S MOTHER BECKY