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Scarlett's Story
Scarlett's Story
In September 2020, 10-year-old Scarlett Griffin was rushed to hospital as she had lost feeling in her legs.
In the space of 48 hours, Scarlett went from being an active child who liked to dance and play, to having a complete C5 (lower neck) spinal cord injury, leaving her paralysed from the chest down.
Scarlett had suffered a spinal cavernoma, a build-up of blood vessels on the spinal cord – a very rare condition, especially in someone so young.
Like most spinal cord injuries, Scarlett’s happened out of the blue and had life-changing consequences for her and her family.
Scarlett spent 14 weeks in hospital and rehabilitation centres, learning how to adjust to life after her injury. Despite this, Scarlett has never lost hope.
At first, it was the end of the world. It was tough on all of us mentally but Scarlett’s very mentally strong and she’s extremely positive about things
The search for treatment
We envision a world without paralysis. Over the last few years, thanks to our amazing supporters, we have invested over £2.2 million into research.
Now, our focus is turning these discoveries into treatments to restore function to people living with paralysis today.
While our ultimate goal is to restore all functions, the restoration of specific physical functions would have a huge impact on the independence, spontaneity and quality of life of people living with a spinal cord injury. Therefore, our most recently funded projects focus on reducing debilitating nerve pain, improving continence, as well as increasing arm and hand function.
Despite Scarlett's amazing attitude to life, her parents hope that scientific advances will give her more independence as she becomes an adult.
We are inspired and proud of how Scarlett has taken on the challenges of her new life. She is a real-life superhero and impresses every single day. However, we would love nothing more for advances in scientific research to give her hope for an even more promising future
How you can help
As we receive no government funding, we need your help now more than ever.
Please, will you give the gift of hope to someone like Scarlett this Christmas? Your generous donation will fund vital medical research to cure paralysis for everyone living with a spinal cord injury.