PLUCKY Tracy Ashworth celebrates her 18th birthday tomorrow walking tall and with her head held high.

Last September things looked very bleak for the teenager. Medics told her she would never walk again after a road accident. They told her parents their daughter was paralysed for life, but Tracy's mum Christine refused to believe them.

Tracy's own determination proved them all wrong when her scheduled six-month stay at Southport specialist spinal injuries unit was cut short to 10 weeks and she left the hospital walking.

A special halo was fastened to her skull with bars extending down to a heavy vest which held her neck in place while the damaged seventh vertebra knitted back together. Tracy, of Elmwood Street, Burnley, remembers everything about the accident when she was crossing Accrington Road with her friend Lynsey Harrison. Throughout the trip to the hospital she was conscious and she remembers waking up in intensive care and screaming. "I just thought 'Where am I - what has happened to me?'" she said.

Her spinal cord was damaged, leaving her without sensation in her legs. She is not even able to tell if she is hot or cold.

To test how hot a bath is she must feel the water with her face, but she does not like baths any more because the water feels like plastic.

Tracy has lost her ability to grip and cannot even spray an aerosol or perfume or open a can of pop.

She still suffers aches and pains and her parents Graham and Christine, who cut short their first ever solo holiday when they got news of the accident happened, say she has mood swings.

But she has achieved what medics said she would not. As she told the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in October last year: "I want to be walking for my 18th birthday."

She said today: "I can't believe how well I've done in such a short space of time. I was glad when I was able to come back home in time for Christmas, but I have just got to take it easy and watch my back. You have got to have determination. If you give up, your muscles will wither away."

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