That made things even harder. We knew there was a 25 per cent risk of something going wrong in surgery. At worst, she could die. When she smiled it made us feel even worse, but we knew she had to have the operation to have any real chance of living.

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It was discovered that she had a floppy larynx. Every time she breathed it was sucking the larynx back into her windpipe, blocking it. The next day she was back in surgery again.

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There was damage to the right side of her brain but, at that stage, we didn't know the extent of it.

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