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Little Lucy’s big battle with multiple sclerosis

May 31 2009 by Alastair Craig, Sunday Sun

Lucy Wood

BRAVE Lucy Wood’s smiles hide a secret sorrow . . . that she’s one of the world’s youngest children to fight multiple sclerosis.

The happy five-year-old should be concentrating on dressing her dolls and giggling at her Disney film favourites.

Instead, last summer her family’s world was shattered when doctors in Newcastle gave them the shock diagnosis they may never recover from.

It is a tragic twist for the Wood clan, from Peterlee, County Durham.

For Lucy’s dad Stuart was told by doctors at the age of 27 that he would have to fight MS.

And after Lucy began suffering terrifying bouts of blindness, vomiting and walking difficulties, Stuart and Lucy’s mum, Sharon, feared the worst.

Sharon took Lucy to an optician who explained there was pressure building at the back of her left eye and referred them to Sunderland Royal Hospital.

She was switched to Newcastle General Infirmary, the children’s specialist centre for the North East, where she was put under a general anaesthetic while doctors carried out a lumbar puncture, blood tests and a brain scan.

That was last summer and a time the family will never forget.

For their “beautiful little girl” was told she had the incurable condition of the central nervous system.

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