WE CELEBRATED MY GIRL'S 18TH AT HER FUNERAL

Diane Smith, 43, was the birthday and send-off she always wanted determined to give her daughter

- SHARON WRIGHT AND RACHEL TOMPKINS

My daughter Libby stopped in the street and looked up hopefully. ‘Carry me, Mummy?’ she smiled. It was 2016 and at five, she never seemed to want to walk anywhere. Laughing, I hoisted her up on to my hip.

I assumed Libby was just being lazy, but a few days later she spent a whole day hopping on one leg. ‘My knee’s hurting,’ she said.

Her dad took her to A&E to check it was nothing serious. But when he rang from Pontefract Hospital, he sounded worried.

‘They’re keeping her in,’ he gasped, explaining the doctors seemed concerned and wanted to run some tests.

She was transferred to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield and we took it in turns staying overnight with Libby.

A week later, a specialist revealed our little girl had juvenile idiopathic arthritis. It caused swollen, painful joints and damaged the cartilage between the bones.

‘I thought arthritis only happened to old people,’ I blurted.

‘Most children grow out of it by their teens,’ the doctor said.

I clung to that thought as the news sank in. We just needed to get her through the next eight years, then she’d be OK.

So we took Libby home with painkillers - and a wheelchair. But soon she was spending more time at hospital than school, due to the pain she was in.

Years went by, and Libby’s hospital stays became part of life. By 12, one ankle was so eaten away she had surgery to fuse the joint with two huge bolts.

Libby’s condition didn’t seem to be getting any better, just worse. So a year later, in 2017, doctors suggested a bone marrow transplant, where the donor stem cells could reset Libby’s immune system.