A family from Northamptonshire has been living through a parent's worst nightmare after a routine trip to a soft play centre left their four-year-old daughter with a severe, life-changing spinal injury.
The Accident That Changed Everything
In March 2023, Lillie Russell, then aged four from Earls Barton, was sitting at the bottom of a slide when another child came down and crashed into her from behind. Her mother, Amelia Russell, 34, received a chilling phone call. "We got a call to say, 'I think Lillie's broken her back but she's not in pain,'" she recalled.
"You can't imagine how stressful it was. It was every parent's worst nightmare," Ms Russell said. "I looked at her back and thought what on earth has happened? I couldn't believe what I was looking at." The family drove Lillie straight to A&E, unaware of the long medical journey that lay ahead.
A Diagnosis and a Daunting Treatment Path
Later that summer, doctors delivered the diagnosis: the impact had triggered a condition known as accident induced scoliosis. This particular type of scoliosis, which can also be caused by events like car crashes, occurs when pressure from a collision causes an abnormal curvature of the spine.
"You don't expect your children to come back from soft play with such a severe injury," said a dismayed Ms Russell. An estimated two million people in the UK live with scoliosis, which can cause chronic back pain if left untreated.
Lillie, who is now seven, endured three spine-stretching procedures under general anaesthetic. "They put her in a machine to stretch her body and try to straighten out her spine," her mother explained. Tragically, the treatments did not work. "After the third operation we realised that it was not correcting. The muscles were wasting. She was only four. It was horrific." During this period, Lillie was in a permanent brace.
An Ongoing Battle and Future Surgery
The family's hopes were dashed as the curvature in Lillie's spine continued to worsen over the following two years. "The curvature was getting worse and worse," Ms Russell confirmed. "The curvature started off at 55 degrees and is now nearly 70 degrees."
Lillie now faces a major operation at London's Royal Orthopaedic Hospital to insert metal rods into her spine. The surgery, however, cannot proceed until she gains a little more weight. This will be followed by a long road to recovery, expected to culminate in a final spinal fusion operation when she turns 18.
This final surgery is a major procedure, which the NHS says can take a team of highly skilled surgeons up to seven hours to complete. It involves connecting vertebrae with metal rods or screws to straighten the backbone.
To help others, Lillie's parents, Amelia and Dan Russell, 44, have launched an Instagram account, @lillielivingwithscoliosis, to chronicle their daughter's journey. "We began the Instagram account because I'm a positive person and so is she," said Ms Russell.
She shared the emotional toll, saying, "Lillie is a girly girl who loves unicorns. But this is her nightmare, and mine too. To watch your daughter noticing herself that she stands differently to her friends is heartbreaking." With incredible resilience, Lillie simply says, "She's got a special back."
