Toddler's condition worsens (From Campaign Series)

Toddler's condition worsens

1:04pm Friday 26th October 2007

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A MOTHER desperate to find a diagnosis for a mystery illness affecting her baby daughter said the little girl's condition has got "dramatically worse".

Today is little Ellie Pyle's second birthday, but mum Sarah Smart would rather be celebrating good news of her daughter's illness.

As we reported previously, Ellie has general developmental delays, meaning her speech and co-ordination skills are unusually slow to develop.

Her sight and hearing are deteriorating fast, and in March she started having epileptic fits.

Mum Sarah, 23, who lives alone with Ellie in Nantyglo, said she desperately wants to know what is happening to her little girl.

Sarah said: "In the last two months she has got dramatically worse.

"She is still having quite a lot of fits, sometime several serious fits a day, and now she's coming down with chest infections all the time."

Ellie's hearing is now so poor she will be fitted with hearing aids on Monday.

She is fed through a tube in her nose, but every time it is inserted into her left nostril the left-hand side of her face swells up.

A series of tests at Abergavenny's Nevill Hall and Cardiff's University of Wales hospitals have failed to make a diagnosis.

Doctors have told Sarah that Ellie is too young for them to make a firm diagnosis, but Sarah thinks it might be the rare neuro-genetic disorder Angelman syndrome, which includes many of Ellie's symptoms.

Sarah is hoping to get Ellie referred to Royal Manchester Children's Hospital to see a geneticist who specialises in Angelman's Syndrome.

But for now she said it is a "full-time job" looking after Ellie, although she does go to Penycwm special school in Ebbw Vale several mornings a week.

Sarah has set up an appeal fund to raise money to send Ellie to a private physiotherapist.

Can you help? Contact Sarah on 07891 269059.

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