WHEN Kirsty Box turns 20 later this year, she will be surrounded by loving friends and family. But the one person who will not be there is her mother, who lies in a coma in nearby Sheppey Community Hospital.

Since being born, Kirsty has lived with proud grandparents Patrick and Pam Lelliott at their home in Holyrood Drive, Minster.

Although she has regularly visited her mother over the years, she has never spoken or communicated at all with the 42-year-old.

The family’s ordeal started on October 10, 1988 when a pregnant Sue was admitted to the old Sheppey General Hospital in Minster.

She had battled throughout her pregnancy with ill health and doctors thought she may be suffering from pre-eclampsia or a brain tumour. But tests couldn’t find anything except some kind of virus.

On October 18, Kirsty was induced and gradually over the following week, Sue slipped into a coma, aged just 22.

She did hold Kirsty beforehand but as she realised something was very wrong, she told Pam: “Mum look after my baby for me and when I’m better I will take over.”

Over the first few months it was a very deep coma and by the end of November she was having fits and the family were told she wouldn’t last until Christmas.

But by May 1989, Sue was in a waking coma, where she awake but not functioning normally. She has been that way ever since.

Patrick and Pam still don’t know what caused Sue to fall into the coma and they say that she can hear people and she does react when they talk to her.

She is currently in Sheppey Community Hospital, where she has been ever since she was moved from the old hospital in 1999. She is not on a life-support machine, she just has a feeding tube and the family visit her every other day.

Pam said: “She just has the occasional spasm now and hasn’t had a fit for about 10 years. She hardly moves but the nurses tell her to smile and she does but she’s not fully aware.”

In 2006, Sue got pneumonia and the family were told that was the end.

There was talk of moving her to a nursing home, but Pam said: “When we told her they are not sending her anywhere any more, she got better days after.”

With regard to how the family cope with it all, Pam said: “You get to the stage where it’s part of your life and it’s part of what you do. We go and see her usually every other day.

“When she was first ill we arranged our lives around her, but now we don’t – we go on holidays. If you don’t come to terms with something like this you would go mad.

“To be honest, if you can’t accept it then you would never survive, I’ve got other kids and grandchildren.”

As for what happens in the future, the family explain the only way to end someone’s coma is to withdraw the feeding tubes, literally starving them to death.

Pam added: “It’s not something we would ever think about. How can you? If she was on a life-support machine we would have agreed to turn it off years ago.

“If she did come back she wouldn’t be the same Sue, she would be another Sue and it would be a shock for her. I don’t think she will ever come back.”

The family and doctors don’t have much hope that Sue will ever wake up and Kirsty plans to live each day as it comes.

When the family talk about Sue, they feel nothing but love and sadness that this has happened.

Patrick and Pam speak fondly of their daughter and remember she was always dressing up and would do so at every available opportunity.

Pam said: “We still have sad moments of wondering what she would have been like and what sort of mum she would have been.”