The mum of a toddler who nearly drowned in a holiday swimming pool is “overwhelmed” after hearing her daughter’s voice for the first time since the horror accident.
Kate Miller was overjoyed when Cally Simspon talked for the first time since the incident at a Spanish hotel in June.
Cally, four, whose eyes are now open, only spoke briefly during her sleep. But, for determined Kate and dad Steven, it is the clearest sign yet their brave little mite is winning her fight to get better.
Mum said: “It was an unforgettable moment so special.”
Kate remains at her daughter’s bedside, four months after she was found unconscious at the foot of a Spanish swimming pool. Doctors are still to confirm if all of the battling youngster’s senses have returned since the accident. But mum Kate, 30, was close to tears last week when she heard Cally speak aloud as she slept at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital.
She said: “I was here and she almost sang the house down while she was sleeping! By being so vocal at night that makes me 100% sure that she’ll speak again one day. She makes so many noises all the time, and you can see her smiling and grinning.”
Cally, of Arbroath, Angus, was rushed to hospital in Barcelona on June 22 after falling into the deep end of the outdoor pool at Salou’s Villa Marina Hotel. She was pulled unconscious from the water, but paramedics managed to get her breathing again.
After weeks in the Hospital Sant Joan de Du, she was flown to a specialist neurological ward in Edinburgh. Upon making considerable progress, she was moved to Ninewells, where Kate and Steven remain by her side every day.
She now breathes unaided, and will shortly be attending a special needs nursery attached to the hospital. Her parents remain overjoyed at her progress.
Dad Steven, 26, said: “She’ll be joining a special needs nursery next month. It’ll get her back into a routine and she’ll be learning on sensory equipment. At Ninewells she already gets physio, where she’s been standing on a tilting table to help her legs and feet as she’s obviously been lying down for so long.
“She’s also in the playroom now too, where she’s even painted using her hands. Progress like that just keeps delighting us.”
Despite neurological experts admitting deciphering the full extent of Cally’s injuries will take time, she will continue to make process. Kate and Steven have been told that parts of the white matter in her brain are damaged in a patchy way, meaning their daughter will need to find other pathways within her brain to transmit messages around those areas which are damaged.
While an undamaged brain would send signals down a particular route, Cally will hopefully learn to carry those messages on alternative paths. The fact that she’s already breathing unaided shows that she’s capable.
Kate added: “We already see reactions from her but a lot of the training she will go through is to trigger more. The day nursery starts will be massive. Looking back and we never thought anything like nursery would be a possibility.
“It’s a real turning point and puts us again on another path forward instead of hovering. I keep a diary of every single moment of her recovery.
“One day I know we’ll all look back at it together.”
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