Former Friends Battle Each Other For Funds For SDR Surgery For Daughters

What a shame that this seems to have ruined what could have been an unbreakable connection between four people who have so many important things in common. I’ve written before about both this operation and the importance of friends who share your disability. I can’t say whether or not the operations will help the girls, but I do know that the friendships that they and their mothers could have had would have been extremely valuable to all of them. I hope they can make up one day.

Izzy Kuta, four, and Honey Lock, five, were born with cerebral palsy and are unable to walk unaided. Their families, who live 12 miles from each other, are locked in a race to raise £50,000 for the surgery in the US.

The girls need to travel from their homes in Essex to St Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri for the procedure to allow them to walk.

But Izzy’s family, from Maldon, have accused the Locks of copying their fund-raising ideas and canvassing for charitable donations on their “home patch”. Honey’s mother Rebecca Lock, from Burnham, says she will have nothing more to do with former friend Natasha Wallis, 26, branding her “nasty”.

The selective dorsal rhizotomy treatment – in which surgeons snip “misfiring” nerves which cause muscle spasms – must be performed before the children reach six for the best results.

Shirley Hume, Izzy’s aunt, said Honey’s family copied her fund-raising ideas and branded the Locks “dishonest” for asking for £60,000 not £50,000.

She added: “We go fund-raising in the streets of Maldon but no one wants to help as they have donated to Honey.”

Rebecca, 26, hit back saying: “The push is really on to raise the rest of the money needed. They’ve been nasty.” She said the extra money would pay for two years of extensive physiotherapy.

Honey has her operation in August, Izzy has one year before she travels.