Parents pleading for help to retrofit their home for Kira

A FAMILY is pleading with the public in a fundraising effort to retrofit their home for their teenage daughter, who is wheelchair-bound due to her deteriorating health and battle with a spinal tumour.

Kira Clarke (16) was diagnosed with a tumour, which is embedded in her spine on her neck, after her parents, Michael Clarke and Natalia Dinsmore, noticed she was dragging her left foot when walking at three-years-old.

Pilocytic Astrocytoma effects Kira’s ability to walk or balance and following the removal of part of the tumour in 2012, the former St Ultan’s Primary School student is battling with muscle weakness.

After the surgery, Kira’s condition deteriorated rapidly and she was left with complete weakness through the left side of her body and started using a wheelchair at times.

In 2016, after complaining about a pain in her left knee, Kira was brought by Natalia and Michael to visit an orthopaedic doctor and she underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus.

“We’ve been through an awful lot over the years, and it’s been especially tough for Kira,” Kira’s mam Natalia tells The Echo.

“I was pregnant on my second child, Niall, when we first found out about Kira’s condition and all that was going on, so we had all the worries about that as well.

“It has been hard for us as parents, myself and her dad Michael, to see the deterioration of our daughter over the last three, nearly four-years.

“In 2018, she made her confirmation and two weeks later she was back in hospital after tearing the meniscus in her knee again.

“She went in for surgery again and she didn’t fully recover from it.

“Prior to the second meniscus tear, Kira was only using the wheelchair for short distances and now, she hasn’t gone back to walk at all.

“She uses her crutches around the house but apart from that, she uses the wheelchair… she’ll always be a wheelchair user now.”

She adds: “Kira is a lovely child. She is extremely intelligent, she wants to study medicine, to do oncology when she finishes school.

“She’s outgoing, loves being with her friends and would be quite a bubbly person – well, at least she usually is but it’s hard at the moment with the upheaval in our lives.”

At present, the Clarke family are living in Natalia’s mother’s house in Meath and are commuting while their house in Cherry Orchard undergoes the necessary retrofitting works.

Having started to change the existing house and construct an extension in May, which will make the property more wheelchair accessible and aide in improving the St Dominic’s College student’s quality of life, the development has encountered a stumbling block.

According to Natalia, inflation has meant that the cost of the extension has increased and after exploring other possibilities, the family has turned to the public to help financially through a GoFundMe.

To donate to the GoFundMe.