Amazing! Generous Rugby community rallies round to give Sofia chance of a life-changing operation

Danielle Creed and David Wilcox launched their gofundme page on Monday, called Sofia’s life-changing ENT surgery.

The donations flooded in and they have now gone past their £3,000 target.

The remarkable response has capped an extraordinary, rollercoaster few days for the family. The operation is scheduled for January 22.

Danielle explained on the fundraising page how they found the prospect of a way forward for her daughter.

She explained: “I am fundraising for my little girl Sofia. Sofia has been a very poorly little girl from the moment she was born.

"We have had no answers until Saturday, December 17. We did a lot of research and we found a private specialist, we paid £250 to have a consultation.

"Our daughter has been in and out of hospital all her life, constantly in pain and poorly, it has massively affected her life and all of ours, she has missed out on so much.

"I have been pushing and trying to escalate her referrals with the NHS but we have got nowhere. Sofia has glue ear in both ears and has hearing loss due to this, she gets ear infections every month and is on antibiotics every six weeks.

“She is in agony every month gets frequent illnesses due to this, she needs to have a operation and sadly due to the strain on the NHS we have no option but to go private. She also needs to have her enlarged tonsils out and a hearing test which they have to do under general anaesthetic to see if she is getting any sounds to her brain.”

And she explained how they reached a crisis point last week: “Friday was the final straw for us, I was driving her to Birmingham Children’s Hospital and she had a febrile convulsion while I was on the motorway, her little body could not handle her temperature.

"I had to take a emergency exit off the motorway and a first response ambulance from children’s hospital was there in five minutes for my little baby.”

But after that scary moment on Friday, Saturday brought new hope when they met the ENT specialist Mr Kuo and made a plan to help Sofia privately rather than wait for NHS treatment.

With the rapid success of the fundraising, that means the surgery could take place as soon as January or February if everything falls into place.

In explaining why they pursued the private option for the earliest possible action, Danielle said: “Our baby has been through enough and we want to do anything we can to make her life better.”

With having found their way to Mr Kuo – who Danielle refers to as, “a diamond, a lifesaver, he’s changed our lives” – and the success of the fundraiser, they are looking ahead to the kind of festive season they didn’t dare dream of.

Danielle added: “We are so overwhelmed by the support people have given us, it’s literally made our Christmas.”