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Kelly can never have
a sweetie
By Kris Gilmartin
LITTLE Kelly McDonald, from Stuartfield in Aberdeenshire, is a pretty girl with a radiant smile, but behind her smile lies a never-ending battle.
 That’s because she suffers from a severe form of epilepsy and is
semi-paralysed down the left side of her body.
Kelly (8) has been in and out of hospital since she was born and has a drug-resistant condition that can’t be controlled by medication.
Instead she has to adhere to a strict and complicated diet to keep her stabilised. She also needs regular physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy.
The day we visited Kelly she suffered five or six small seizures in the space of 20 minutes.
It might look as though she’s simply dozing off, but as her dad Ross explained, Kelly is more prone to an epileptic attack when she has to concentrate, which makes learning at school very difficult.
Special diet
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 Mum and dad, Ross and Marna, with Kelly.
 Kathleen Ross (left) and Anne Brockman with the kitchen units they hope will soon be replaced at the occupational therapy department of Aberdeen Royal Children’s Hospital.
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But it was just a typical day for Kelly — she can expect to have 100 small, almost unnoticeable, seizures every day. Her mum Marna points out the cut on her cheek which was the result of a fit in the living room a few days before.
Today Kelly sits on her dad’s knee and he keeps a firm arm round her as she slips into another small seizure.
“At the moment Kelly is on a special ketogenic diet for her epilepsy. It involves accurately calculating and weighing out food,” explains Kathleen Ross, chief paediatric dietitian at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital.
“Some would say a ketogenic diet is a variation on the Atkins diet — very high fat and very, very low carbohydrates. It has an anti-convulsive effect, which works with children with severe epilepsy and can actually control seizures.
“It has the same effect as the Atkins diet in that it produces the chemical ketone, but we are using it in a medical sense. It’s very hard work and requires a lot of commitment from mum and dad.”
Kelly has to have three carefully calculated meals a day, and it means the sweets and snacks most kids her age enjoy are strictly off limits.
“It’s really hard work, especially when you have other children,” says mum Marna.
“Kelly’s younger sister Joanne (6) has to have snacks in her bedroom or on the way home from school so Kelly doesn’t see her eating sweets.
“Although Kelly’s meals are small and quite complicated, Joanne often asks to have the same. We give her something similar without as much fat, which helps encourage Kelly to eat her meal, too.”
Kelly goes to Anna Ritchie Special Needs School in Peterhead and takes a packed lunch with her each day.
“It’s a very good school. She learns home economics and gets to bake cakes but unfortunately she can’t eat them,” adds Marna.
What the Occupational Therapy department at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital really needs is a height-adjustable Phlexicare kitchen that will allow wheelchair access and help the kids rehabilitate smoothly into everyday life.
“One thing the new kitchen could be used for is teaching families how to prepare complicated diets like Kelly’s,” Kathleen says.
“It’s important to make food look and taste nice for the kids and explaining that to families is much easier in a kitchen setting rather than just on paper.
“It would be a great resource to help teach this diet more effectively.”
The other condition Kelly suffers from is childhood hemiplegia, a condition affecting one side of the body caused by damage to some part of the brain.
Generally, injury to the left side of the brain will cause a right hemiplegia and injury to the right side a left hemiplegia. In Kelly’s case it is her left side.
The hemiplegia gives Kelly great difficulty in grasping objects well with her left hand. Intensive occupational therapy will help her overcome the problem.
Confidence
Again, the new kitchen the RACH needs will give Kelly the confidence to go back into mainstream schooling and learn to use a fork and knife without too much trouble.
“If a child with coordination difficulties was about to go to secondary school and was worried about taking part in home economics, this new kitchen could allow them to come in during the summer and practice specific functional skills,” explains Anne
Brockman, head paediatric occupational therapist.
“We would go through a range of adapted equipment they might be using when they go to secondary and try it out. When they go to school they have enough to worry about without feeling embarrassed about knives and forks.
“You can’t change their underlying skills but you can help them practise and develop strategies.
“If we had these new facilities, with The Sunday Post readers’ help, it would enable them to do that.”
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