REASON FOR TEENAGER'S CONDITION MAY NEVER BE SOLVED

A FATHER whose 14-year-old daughter has the mental age of a six to nine-month-old baby says they might not ever get answers about what happened to her.

- HOLLY MORGAN

Teenager Mia is the only child of Chris and Emma Connor, from Bridgend. It was over her first Christmas that she was diagnosed with chronic epilepsy, but since then the exact nature of her condition has remained a mystery, and her family are losing any hope of getting answers.

Chris said: "Mia's non-verbal and while she is the size of a fully grown adult, she is developmentally somewhere between that of a six to nine-month-old baby. She has a form of epilepsy which we believe ultimately means not being able to learn or remember things. The word 'Mum' pops out every now and then and 'Dad' once a quarter.

"Mia was an IVF baby - we'd been trying for a number of years when she came along. When she was just a couple of days old she went lifeless on us and she was rushed into hospital.

"She seemed to recover from that, but a couple months later we started to notice that she was missing her milestones."

Mia's first Christmas was a heart-breaking time for parents Chris and Emma, because alongside the hospital visits and treatments, they had to accept that Mia was not going to lead the life any parent would hope and expect for their child.

Chris said: "It was a very difficult time. Mia was started on a meds jumble which she's been on ever since then and our first couple of years with her involved a lot of hospital visits and unknowns. But beyond that was realising that Mia was not going to grow up as normal.