Lucy Corkeran was relaxing at home after work when she felt a sharp pain in her chest. Within 45 minutes she was paralysed.

September 18 last year had started off like another normal day for Lucy. She had come home from her office job and was relaxing with her sister Maisie when she suffered a spinal stoke.

The family from North Swindon now wants to raise £20,000 to help pay for her rehabilitation.

Lucy, now 19, said: “I went downstairs and by the time I got there my right arm was completely numb and dead.

“I didn’t really think much of it. By the time I got back up stairs, my left arm was completely dead

.

“Within 45 minutes my body had disintegrated. It was so scary. Bit by bit it was completely gone,” said Lucy, who had wanted to become a nurse.

Lucy’s mum called an ambulance and she was taken to Great Western Hospital. After a series of tests, she was told she’d suffered a spinal stroke and was paralysed from the chest down.

“I try not to remember that moment,” she said. “It was just awful. I started crying. There’s nothing you really can think.

The cause of the stroke was never determined. “If there was a reason, like an accident, at least it would make sense,” Lucy said.

She was in hospital for three months. “I had to lie flat on my back for six weeks. I couldn’t even sit up to have a drink.”

“I had so much freedom and independence. I was doing my own thing and now it’s just like being a baby. I feel like I’m a child again

.”

Lucy was transferred to a spinal unit in Salisbury, where she stayed until January before moving home and attending a spinal cord injury rehabilitation facility in Bristol.

Although she can not walk she has regained movement in both her arms and two of her fingers. “From not being able to move a muscle, I am sitting here now about to do my makeup with two fingers. It’s crazy,” she said.

Lucy’s family have started fundraising to help cover the costs of physiotherapy and the equipment and specialist furniture she needs at home.

“The prognosis for the future is completely unknown,” said Lucy.

“I would love eventually to have my own charity for spinal cord patients. That’s the dream,” she said.

Visit justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lucy-corkeran