Hope has become the great catchword of our times, conveying the powerful message that it is possible to triumph against the odds, no matter how unlikely or even impossible it might seem. Ten-year-old Nicole Cahill is, quite literally, a walking embodiment of that idea.

This time last year, this remarkable young girl couldn't walk by herself and often had to resort to crawling on her hands and knees to get around. The prognosis for any kind of recovery was very grim. Struck down by a rare, debilitating illness four years ago, she went into a three-week coma, with seizures and a stroke along the way.

Nicole was left with limited ability to control or move her body. Initially, she couldn't even swallow. After making a partial recovery, Nicole's convalescence was drastically set back due to a lack of resources in this country, and her parents, Mairead and Bill, were told that their daughter would never walk on her own again.

However, the Cahills were to find hope for their child after a fortuitous visit home from a relative based in the US. This was the start of an incredible journey for Nicole and her family that ended in tears of joy and disbelief at Dublin Airport last month, when this young miracle girl walked, unaided, for the first time in four years, through the arrival gates.

It has been a long, emotional journey for the little girl and her family and, today, as she plays happily with her Wii at her home in Marshalstown, Co Wexford, it is hard to believe that her parents were told she would never walk on her own again.

To understand the extent of Nicole's achievement, it's necessary to go back to Thursday, October 6, 2004. Nicole, then aged six, came home from school in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford complaining of a headache. Her mother, Mairead, didn't think much of it. Nicole was an active little girl, always flitting from school to ballet to Irish dancing. It would be understandable for such a busy child to get an occasional headache. Mairead gave her daughter two painkillers and that seemed to do the trick.

Nicole was sluggish the next morning, so her mother took her to their GP.

"The doctor said it was a viral throat infection, because her tonsils were coming up very large," Mairead tells Weekend magazine. "Afterwards, Nicole was in great

form. She was able to sit up, eat her lunch and watch television."

That night, Nicole deteriorated rapidly, and the next morning she was nearly unconscious.

"I couldn't get her up," Mairead explains. "She wasn't completely out of it, but she wasn't able to answer me back and she couldn't understand what I was saying."

Nicole was rushed to the intensive care unit at Wexford General Hospital, where tests proved inconclusive. The next day, she was sent to Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin.

"Nicole had to be ventilated for the journey, in case anything happened and she had to be resuscitated," Mairead says. "Once Nicole went on the ventilator, she slipped into a coma and stayed in it for the next 24 days."

When she got to Temple Street, an MRI showed that Nicole had legions on both the white and grey matter in her brain, and she was diagnosed with Acute Disseminating Encephalomyelitis (ADEM). This is a neurological disorder characterised by inflammation of the brain and spinal cord that can occur after a viral infection and which causes serious nerve damage.

Nicole's brain was so swollen that she started having seizures, then suffered a stroke. She was subsequently diagnosed with spastic quadriparesis, which would leave her with limited motor skills. Doctors warned Mairead and Bill that if Nicole came out of her coma, she would most likely be brain damaged.

"It was a nightmare, but we were so in shock that nothing really registered," says Mairead. "After 10 days in the coma, her doctor said that the medication wasn't working and that we should start considering chemotherapy, which would at least bring down the brain swelling.

"Luckily, she started responding to some new treatments, and after another 14 days, Nicole came round."

While Nicole was in hospital, her dad Bill was in the midst of his final exams at University College Dublin to qualify as a paramedic. "It was very stressful, as you imagine, but I got through them," he says.

"I came over to Temple Street in the evenings, but we have two other children, William (now aged eight) and Debra (now 15). They really felt it at the time, perhaps Debra more so because she was older and understood more. We were worried about her, because she tended to keep things to herself. Between it all, it was very hectic, but we were very lucky to have great support from family and friends."

Miraculously, Nicole didn't suffer brain damage while in a coma, and was still on an intellectual par with children her own age.

"Nicole knew who I was, but she couldn't talk," Mairead remembers. "That was the hardest thing for me: not being able to hear her voice. If she was in pain, she couldn't tell us. We would just see tears coming down her face.

"When Nicole woke up, she couldn't eat, swallow or even close her mouth. She was on tube feeds and had to wear nappies. She couldn't move her arms and her balance was very affected. She basically had to relearn how to do everything in rehab.

"Temple Street had started doing physiotherapy with her while she was in the coma," she adds, "and they splintered her, which prevented a lot of deformities. She was lucky to get away with so few."

Nicole herself can't recall any of the experience. "I remember being in hospital after I started talking again, but nothing before that," she says.

For the next eight months, Nicole was a full-time patient at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire. Thanks to intensive physio and occupational therapy, Nicole regained some mobility with the use of a walking frame.

Mairead and Bill then decided to bring her home, so that she could resume her life and be with her brother and sister. But, perhaps, they naively had too much faith in the Irish public health system, believing it would cater for Nicole's needs outside of a professional therapeutic environment.

"We had some home exercises, and her doctors started setting up her physio, but once we came home we couldn't get a regular routine going," Mairead explains. "Nicole was coming from five days of physio to a situation where she was lucky to get one a week. Then it drifted to every other week, because the HSE didn't have the resources. It wasn't the quality of the care, but the quantity. We couldn't even get an occupational therapist."

Not surprisingly, Nicole began to relapse. Because she wasn't getting enough physio, her legs would freeze up, and she started falling on her face (breaking her front teeth three times). She couldn't rely on the frame for support, often choosing to crawl instead, and had to use a manual wheelchair (and later an electric one that the Cahills paid for themselves) to get around.

As far as doctors here were concerned, the future looked grim and the family feared that Nicole wouldn't walk again. But Mairead and Bill were not willing to accept that bleak assessment. Bill's sister, Breda, came home from New York for Christmas 2007 and was heartbroken to see Nicole regressing. Breda knew an orthopaedic surgeon in Manhattan called Dr Jacob Rozbruch, and arranged for him to look at Nicole's files.

"From her files, he was expecting Nicole to need a complete muscle transplant," Mairead says. "He said to come over for an assessment, so I travelled over with her. When he met Nicole, he was shocked at how much she could do. He said she had so much going for her, but needed surgery to correct her leg and foot, which was sticking out sideways. He was confident that he could get her back on her feet."

The problem now was paying for the treatment, which would cost upwards of €200,000. "We tried to sell our home to raise money, but with the fall in house values, we couldn't shift it," Bill explains. "So we decided we had to start fundraising. I was dreading putting out the appeal, to be honest. I've always been independent and never had to rely on people, but I had no choice.

"I needn't have worried because the response was just amazing. So many people rallied to raise money, such as Wexford GAA All Star, Matty Forde. There were auctions, race nights, soccer tournaments, and a new restaurant even donated its first night of takings," says Bill.

With enough money raised to cover deposits, Nicole and Mairead travelled to the US last June for an extensive operation on her leg, hip and ankle. All together, mother and daughter spent six months in America, where Nicole received rehab five days a week.

Her recovery was exceptional, and Bill, William and Debra could hardly believe their eyes when they saw how much Nicole had come on when they visited America for two weeks last September.

Then, in early December, doctors said that Nicole was well enough to come home, having gained greater stability as well as control over her arms and legs. Mairead kept Nicole's recovered skills a secret, which only heightened the emotion at Dublin Airport on December 15, 2008, when Nicole came through the arrival gate walking by herself for the first time since she became ill.

In addition to her family, a host of TV cameras were also on hand to cover this special story, but Nicole took it all in her stride. "I was really excited because my nanny and granddad, and my family were there," she says. "I got a big cheer when I walked through and a lot of people were crying. I missed everyone so much. America was good, but I prefer my own house."

After a quiet family Christmas, Nicole is getting back to normal, and started back in fourth class at the beginning of the month. She now has physio and occupational therapy five days a week, divided between Wexford and Adamstown in Dublin (as well as topping up at home with her new Wii Fit from Santa).

Her handwriting is getting better, and she has a computer and teaching assistant to help her with school work. All the exertion means that Nicole has to sleep for an hour every day between school and her physio. People in the locality and surrounding counties are still holding events to raise money for the Nicole Cahill Fund, as her recovery will only be maintained with this level of intensive therapy.

"She will go back to the US at some point for more work," says Mairead. "The pressure now is to keep her this good and get her balance even better. We will do whatever it takes. She won't be allowed slip back again."

When we look for Nicole to take some photographs, she is back upstairs in her princess-pink bedroom, dancing on her Wii.

Making up for lost time.

Donations to the Nicole Cahill Fund can be made to the following bank details: AIB Enniscorthy, sort code 933414, account number 31951002

- Declan Cashin