A White Christmas for Annabelle

Life Changing

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.6 • 735 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For Lisa Hover and her husband Andy, life on the Hampshire Dorset border with their family of four children seemed idyllic. Even when a routine sight test on their daughter Annabelle as she started Primary school picked up an abnormality it all seemed manageable. But the abnormality turned out to be macular degeneration and early sight loss, which itself masked a more severe and life shortening genetic condition. The diagnosis of Batten disease changed everything. And yet, with no cure available, and physical and mental decline forecast, Annabelle lead the family in demanding everything from her limited life span. That included setting up a charity, Batten fighters forever or BFF ( battenfightersforever.com ), continuing her Girl Guiding and going skiing. Lisa talks to Sian about the challenges, the joys and the sadness - and particularly about Annabelle's desire to have a White Christmas will all the family.

Producer; Tom Alban

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting.
0:04.7	Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon, and I make podcasts for the BBC.
0:08.4	I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book.
0:11.4	But when I started commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts.
0:15.4	I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right mixture of sounds could take you into
0:19.2	a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to
0:25.2	give it a go myself, which to cut a long story short led to a BBC training scheme and a whole
0:30.0	new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories
0:34.2	that make you go wow like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC Sounds.
0:40.8	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. You're about to listen to the latest series of life-changing.
0:48.6	Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts, but if you're in the UK,
0:53.4	you can listen to the latest
0:55.4	episodes first on BBC Sounds.
0:59.0	Hello and welcome to the series that hears from extraordinary people who've experienced a
1:03.8	moment that alters everything.
1:06.3	Today, our story starts with a young girl called Annabelle.
1:10.2	When her mum wrote to us, she called her
1:12.4	an amazing person with a great positive attitude to life. That life was to be vastly shortened,
1:19.6	but how Annabel and her three siblings managed a shocking diagnosis gives hope and inspiration
1:25.3	to us all. Her mum, Lisa Hova, is here. Hello, Lisa. Hello. Thanks very
1:31.2	much for writing to us. Thanks for coming in. Tell us about the family. You and Andy got married
1:36.7	2001, less than a decade later. You're a family of six and you're living on the Hampshire
	...

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