Freya Tregear can’t walk because the muscles in her legs aren’t strong enough, but she manages to get around by a combination of shuffling on her bottom and crawling.
Freya also can’t eat or talk, but when she wants something she can make herself understood - she’s made up her own version of sign language so she can say what she wants to say. Chris calls her ‘the Duchess’.
Freya’s mother Keeley Reed said: “She’s very switched on. People tend to put her in a box because of her disabilities but she knows everything that’s going on. She’s very sharp and very sociable.”
Freya, six, has an undiagnosed disorder similar to cerebral palsy which affects her in a broad range of ways. She was born with a heart defect and one kidney. She has chronic lung disease and has to be fed through a tube into her stomach.
Doctors ended up performing heart surgery to give her the best chance of recovery, and she spent nearly four months in the hospital.
“They told us to prepare for the worst,” said Keeley. “At one point they said I might have to consider turning off the life-support machines, but I wouldn’t do that. Freya has never done anything by the book. She has always done things at her own pace and if she’d had enough of fighting she would make that decision - and I wouldn’t take it away from her.”
Freya pulled through against all the odds, and last week she was happily visiting her friends at Little Harbour.
Dressed in a pretty dress, with a bow in her hair, she didn’t stop smiling. “She’s a real girly girl,” said her mum.