Living life to the full, the girl with only half a brain takes her first steps

She was suffering from an incurable genetic condition for which the only possible hope was to have half her brain removed.

Doctors warned her parents, Amanda and Martyn Cowsill, that their daughter would never walk, talk, cry or smile like a normal child - even if she survived.

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But at the age of five, Cordelia is walking on her own and is even able to enjoy kicking a football.

"It was a difficult decision, but the operation was a lifeline," said 39-yearold Mrs Cowsill, a teaching assistant.

"It was like she was reborn and now she's doing really well."

Cordelia, from Oldham, was born with an hereditary condition called Tuberous Sclerosis.

It caused non- cancerous tumours to develop on Cordelia's brain and meant that she suffered up to 70 epileptic fits a day.

The disorder affects one in 7,000 babies, but only a handful suffer the severe form that Cordelia has.

Her older brother Oliver, has a very mild form and Cordelia is the sixth known person in her family to inherit it.

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Within hours of her birth at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, she began to suffer a potentially deadly epileptic fit every few minutes.

Medics decided that the only way to stop them was to remove the tumours which were affecting most of the right side of her brain, in an operation known as a hemispherectomy.

Fewer than 20 of these operations are performed in the UK each year.

However, doctors warned Mrs Cowsill and her husband, a business development manager, that there was only a 50 per cent chance that their daughter, then aged 17 months, would survive the seven-hour surgery.

"We knew she didn't really have any other option," Mrs Cowsill added.

"Cordelia was having 70 fits a day even on the medication.

"She just couldn't have carried on like that. I'm sure she would have died as one of the fits would have killed her.

Fortunately, Cordelia survived the operation in April 2003, and was home within a month. Doctorssay that most of the functions which would have been carried out by the missing half of her brain will eventually transfer to the left side, although her rehabilitation is likely to be slow.

But Mrs Cowsill added: "Cordelia is our little princess.

"She's a very sociable little girl who enjoys learning things and is always running around, tiring me out. She's a real battler."