Runner faces a marathon effort to save sight

TEEN WHO DREAMED OF BEING PERSONAL TRAINER IN TUMOUR BATTLE

- NEAL KEELING

HEALTHY and beautiful, a 10-yearold girl is pictured at the finishing line of a charity race. The child, proudly wearing her medal, is Courtney Harris and through her early teens she took part in many runs nurturing dreams of one day becoming a personal trainer.

Now 17, a cruel twist of fate has halted her ambitions.

In March last year she was diagnosed with a tumour on her pituitary gland near her brain. There is now a real risk that she could lose her sight.

Her mother, Lisa, from Moston, Manchester, said: "She was perfectly healthy. She was doing 10k runs and 5k runs, she was going to the gym. She was just a normal child. She wanted to be a personal trainer. The diagnosis stopped her.

"She started having migraines and she was sick with them and it would last for days. She collapsed at home and we took her to A&E. It was a really scary process to go through. She was ill with headaches for a year and a half before we got the diagnosis.

"She could be OK when she woke up in the morning and go to school. Then later in the day she would have an attack and there was nothing she could do. She would describe it as a hammer that was banging on her head continuously. The school would often send her home. She missed a lot of school because of how she was feeling."