Sydney parents hopeful controversial spinal cord surgery will help their daughter walk.

By Mazoe Ford.

When a child walks for the first time it is a moment of great joy, but one Sydney family is yet to experience that with their four-year-old daughter.

This week Isabella Lombardo will undergo controversial spinal cord surgery in the United States, with the goal of helping her take her first steps unassisted.

The little girl has a form of cerebral palsy called spastic diplegia and needs a wheelchair, walking frame or her parents’ help to move.

She is also required to have around 27 injections every three months to ease muscle pain, and at least three therapy sessions a week.

“Isabella just doesn’t have that independence that I think a lot of people take for granted that every child is just born with,” Isabella’s mother Libby Lombardo told ABC News.

“Right now she’s four, but what’s that going to be like when she’s eight? When she’s 12? When she’s 20?” Mrs Lombardo said.

“So, we’re really just fighting for every-day, simple independence.”

Isabella’s father Joseph Lombardo said the couple’s six-month old baby son “is more independent than Isabella is”.

“He can sit on the floor by himself, he can play with toys by himself, he can feed himself and he’s already standing up and holding on independently,” Mr Lombardo said.

“Isabella says, ‘Daddy I’m getting older now, I should be able to walk soon’ — it’s very hard.”

On December 29, Isabella will have an operation called Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SRD) at St Louis Children’s Hospital in the US state of Missouri.

Professor Iona Novak from Australian not-for-profit organisation The Cerebral Palsy Alliance described the procedure as controversial and irreversible.

“The surgeon actually cuts selectively part of the abnormal nerve that’s connecting from the muscle back to the spinal cord, and by cutting that signal it actually allows the child to have their muscles relaxed,” Professor Novak told the ABC.

The surgery is available in Australia, but Isabella Lombardo does not qualify for it because her doctors say she is too young, her condition is not serious enough and the procedure might make her worse.

Professor Novak said she understands why parents whose children do not qualify for the surgery in Australia seek out doctors in America.

She said Australian surgeons are very selective about who can undergo SRD surgery.

“Someone that’s straight, someone that’s strong, someone that’s about six years of age, and someone that can selectively turn on the right muscles, so that when you turn off some of those connections they can still walk and move,” Professor Novak explained.

“If you choose a candidate or a person who doesn’t have those features the surgery could actually make them worse, because the spasticity was involuntarily helping them to sit up or to walk and if you turn that off that could actually make their function worse.”

Joseph and Libby Lombardo said they know the risks but believe US surgeon, Dr T.S. Park, will help their daughter walk.

“He has performed over 3,000 of these surgeries on children and I’ve only ever heard positive results,” Mrs Lombardo said.

Positivity is the Lombardo family’s mantra and Isabella will demonstrate exactly that as one of the children starring in the ABC’s New Year’s Eve television coverage alongside Hoot the Owl.

“I hope other children can see that she’s just a kid like them,” Mrs Lombardo said.

“Everybody is different in some way, whether they have got reading glasses on, or whether they’ve got a food allergy, you know everybody’s kind of got something — with Isabella it’s just a lot more visible.”

The Lombardo family will return to Sydney in January, and then daily post-operative therapy will begin.

“[Dr Park] thinks Isabella will be able to walk with sticks which is a big improvement from where she’s at today — and it could be better than that, but he doesn’t expect it to be worse,” Mr Lombardo said.

“Our hope is simply that by the time she is six and she’s in primary school that she’ll be able to play with her friends, go to the bathroom on her own, and make her own lunch, and just have independence.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.