A YOUNG girl has been left mute and unable to walk after “feeling off-balance during PE”.

Lydia Williams’ daughter Amelie, 12, who lives near Wells in Somerset, was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, aged 11, after she had an eye check-up in March 2023 and the optician noticed her eyes “flickering”.

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During her athletics training, she began to notice issues with her balance.

However, it wasn’t until a routine annual check-up at the optician that some unusual symptoms were detected.

The following day, she underwent a 10-hour operation to remove an apricot-sized brain tumour.

However, when she regained consciousness, she couldn’t open her eyes for the first 24 hours and had lost the ability to walk and talk.

The removal of the tumour “caused a shock in her cerebellum” – a vital component in the brain which plays a role in motor movement regulation and balance control.

This meant that when Amelie regained consciousness after the surgery, she was experiencing posterior fossa syndrome (PFS), a complication of surgery for medulloblastoma that can cause issues with communication, motor skills, and mood.

The 12-year-old was mute for three weeks, mainly communicating through hand gestures and passing the time by listening to the Tracy Beaker audiobook series.

When she did regain some of her speech, it sounded “robotic.”

Amelie then endured six weeks of “horrific” radiotherapy, which caused her to lose her hair.

This was followed by nine months of chemotherapy and rehabilitation sessions, including physiotherapy to help her regain her movement and strength, as she spent about a year in a wheelchair in total.

Since finishing her treatment, Amelie has started secondary school for the first time on a reduced timetable as she continues to recover.

With hope and determination, she is gradually re-learning her sporting, singing, and beatboxing skills.

“(After my surgery) I couldn’t see anyone. I could sense they were there and I could hear them… but I couldn’t respond,” Amelie told PA Real Life.

She has had to relearn how to do everything again

Lydia Williams

“I felt like my body was a shell and I was trying to call out to my family, but my mouth wouldn’t move.

“When I lost my voice, it was really hard because normally I sing to express myself. If I feel sad, then I sing a song to myself.

“Now I’m going back to school and I’m doing the same clubs that I used to – going back to my gymnastics, going back to my swimming, and I’m just working on swimming techniques.”

Lydia, a 43-year-old teacher, said: “The optician said to me: ‘Just have a little look at this Mum, her eyes are doing something’.

“I had a look and they were tremoring, flickering, and I said: ‘What’s that?’

He replied: ‘I’m not sure, but I think you need to take her to the GP’.”

Amelie had a GP appointment later that day, which led to a referral to Royal United Hospital in Bath, where she underwent a series of blood tests and an MRI.

Once the scan was completed, doctors requested to speak with Lydia – and this is when she received the news that Amelie had a brain tumour, which was later confirmed as stage 4 medulloblastoma.

‘Is she going to die?’

Lydia explained: “I remember the doctor saying to me ‘Is there anything you need to know? Is there anything you want to ask us?’

Lydian asked: “Is she going to die?”

The doctor replied: “We don’t know.”

Lydia called her 50-year-old husband Chris, a yacht captain who was away at sea in Italy at the time, to inform him of the news, and Amelie was taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary via ambulance.

“She wasn’t able to talk, she wasn’t able to move, she didn’t open her eyes for the first 24 hours – she was breathing on her own, that was about it,” Lydia said.

“Ever since then, she has had to relearn how to do everything again.”

Amelie explained that she initially felt “trapped” after the surgery. Although she wanted to cry, she held back her tears, determined to stay positive.

It took Amelie three weeks to make her first sound again, and after two months, she began using words to communicate.

‘MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB’

She added: “I couldn’t talk properly like I am talking now, I was just like a robot talking, and my parents said ‘You had a tumour and the doctors had to take it out, you had cancer’.”

Although the treatment felt like “a mountain to climb,” Amelie said her family, friends, dog Dottie and the digital support groups from Young Lives vs Cancer helped her through it.

She also enjoyed visiting the two ducklings that hatched in the hospital school.

“It was agony for her, agony for me every day, and I would constantly say to her ‘Well, we’re going to go and see the ducks in a minute’, just to try and get her through that,” Lydia said.

“We used to talk about when we could walk the dog again and when we could go and lay on the field in the sunshine and smell the fresh grass – all those things that you just miss when you’re in that artificial environment.”

Gradually, with speech and language sessions along with physiotherapy, Amelie began to regain her movement and ability to talk.

Her little brother, Arlo, 10, even assisted her with some exercises at home and helped take care of her.

Since finishing her treatment in March, Amelie has continued her rehabilitation and started secondary school.

She’s also rejoined local clubs she used to attend and has been teaching herself to sing and beatbox again.

Amelie said artwork has been essential to her recovery and she would strongly advise other children with cancer to talk to “somebody that’s going through a similar thing to you” and to hold on to “hope”.

She said: “I was scared but I would always tell myself ‘Hey, it’s all going to be okay.

‘You’re going to get better and go out of the hospital and be able to do the stuff that you did before’.

“I’d like to shout out Caroline, Alban, Tia, Boheme, Aisha, and Lily, and a special thanks to my best friend Olive who has been by my side since the beginning.”

Lydia added: “I think cancer scares everybody, children and adults, and it carries with it a lot of negative connotations… but now, being a family that’s gone through something like that, I also feel that cancer isn’t the end.”

Amelie and her family were supported by the charity Young Lives vs Cancer. To find out more, visit: www.younglivesvscancer.org.uk.

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A NEW smartphone app can tell you if you’re at risk of heart disease, stroke or diabetes, experts say.

MyBVI is an at-home body scan tool that analyses your health in as little as 30 seconds.

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It uses two photos to reveal your body fat, visceral fat, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio and waist circumference – without the need for a tape measure.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) and taking into account your age and gender, this then produces a body volume index (BVI) figure from zero to 20, which determines your likelihood of future health problems.

Generally, the higher the number, the higher your chances of falling ill.

A BVI score below 13 is considered low risk, while figures above 13 indicate an increased risk.

The technology is 23 per cent more accurate than body mass index (BMI) which relies on weight and height alone, scientists claim.

Inventor Richard Barnes said: “With MyBVI, users simply take two images with their smartphone or tablet from the comfort of their home, and within seconds, they receive their measurements.

“It considers where fat is distributed on the body, and how that impacts health, rather than just on total weight.

“Anyone can do it. And the images are never stored or used, ensuring complete privacy.

“BVI is a predictive risk indicator for three of the most significant diseases in global healthcare – diabetes, cardiovascular disease (which encompasses heart disease and stroke) and high blood pressure.”

Developer Select Research hopes it can help ease the burden on medical staff by allowing patients to submit images from home, eliminating the need for GP or other clinic visits.

Those deemed high-risk can then be monitored, “enabling cost-effective preventive care and earlier diagnosis”.

It should also reduce the chances of ‘false positives’ for obesity, particularly in patients with muscular builds, ethnic minorities and women, according to the team.

Richard said: “The government now has an opportunity to fulfil its promise of creating a future-ready NHS by adopting a more accurate understanding of body composition and its impact on health.

“BVI accurately identifies more than four out of five patients who might be at risk of heart disease, stroke or type 2 diabetes – marking a 23 per cent improvement over BMI and outperforming manual measurements.

“These findings indicate that BVI is a more effective risk indicator than BMI, which was created in 1835 and is outdated and inaccurate when assessing individual health.

“After 18 years of development, we’ve created an app that offers more comprehensive body measurements that lowers the cost of entry and could become a new medical standard.

“It offers a more comprehensive approach, with detailed data on total body fat, visceral fat, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio, waist circumference and BVI.

“Maintaining good health is important for everyone, so it’s crucial that people have access to accurate tools like MyBVI to make the right decisions about their health.”

It could serve as a powerful screening tool for identifying metabolic syndrome

Researchers

MyBVI is free to download but requires a £3.99-a-month subscription to unlock “premium benefits”.

It presents data on a graph to help users understand how their body changes over time.

The app predicts someone’s metabolic syndrome risk and severity.

A study published in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health found it to be more accurate than BMI.

“The tool offers a more precise alternative to other measures of disease risk, like BMI and waist-to-hip ratio,” the researchers said.

“It could serve as a powerful screening tool for identifying metabolic syndrome.”

Metabolic syndrome can lead to a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, liver disease, and other serious health problems.

People with metabolic syndrome typically have apple-shaped bodies, meaning they carry a lot of their weight around their middle.