A FORMER acrobat whose rare disease leaves her unable to move other than to blink is seeking help from Chinese scientists.
Despite careers as a trapeze artist and yoga teacher, Maxine Craik, of Beach Road, Mersea, lays paralysed by Spinocerebellar Ataxia.
Her friends and carers are trying to raise 60,000 to send her to China where Nobel Prize winning doctors offer controversial stem-cell therapy, not available in the UK.
She has an incurable brain disease which causes the body to shut down, but leaves the mind unaffected.
Over the past year, Miss Craik, 49, has lost the ability to talk, walk, swallow and her eye sight is failing.
The mum-of-one communicates by blinking as helpers use an alphabet board to spell messages.
Jayne Richards, her personal carer for five years, said: Maxine can hear and understand everything that is said to her, but her only response is to almost wink. Imagine the horror and frustration.
We have decided to try to raise enough money to take her to China so that she can undergo this potentially life-changing treatment, but, is not going to be cheap.
But it is a glimmer of hope.
Miss Richards began researching stem-cell therapy four years ago to try and help her friend. She has agreed a treatment plan with the Shenzhen Beike Cell Engineering Research Institute near Hong Kong with the blessing of UK neurologists.