A MUM has shared her Christmas wish for her four-year-old daughter to breathe with less oxygen support in a Christmas appeal for children's hospice charity Julia’s House.

Isabella Chan was just six-months-old when doctors discovered she had a rare condition that causes chronic lung disease.

Now her Mum Erica fears that if her condition worsens “there may not be a lot more they can do" for her.

Erica said: "Isabella spent her first Christmas in hospital. For the whole of her first year, she was moved to and from Southampton and Salisbury hospitals while they did tests. There was quite a lot of time that I couldn’t be with her, which was very hard because I didn’t know how long it would ever be until I could take her home.”

Isabella is now able to live at home with her mum in Amesbury, but she needs round-the-clock care for her complex condition.

She can’t eat so she feeds and has water hourly through a tube in her stomach and she’s constantly connected to an oxygen tank, even when she plays and sleeps.

The oxygen cylinders that Isabella needs are heavy and Erica can’t carry around more than one at a time.

This means that Isabella has never been able to visit a Santa’s Grotto because her mum is worried that the oxygen she relies on may not last long enough for her to queue with all the other children.

Erica said: "My Christmas wish would be that we can reduce Isabella’s oxygen soon. She is on the maximum she can be on at home. It means if she became ill, or if her breathing worsened, she would have to be admitted to the hospital and there may not be a lot more they can do for Isabella. There is the potential to go on the transplant list for new lungs, but it’s something I find very difficult to think about - Isabella suffering or struggling to fight for her next day.”

Single Mum Erica has been supported by Julia’s House since Isabella was first born. Its specialist nurses and carers provide free respite support, clinical care and end of life support in the family home and at its hospices in Corfe Mullen and Devizes.

It is only thanks to public donations that Julia’s House can provide its lifeline of care for the growing number of seriously ill children and their families in Dorset and Wiltshire.

To make a donation and find out more about Erica and Isabella’s story , visit www.juliashouse.org/Isabella.