Mum sets her alarm for her 8am tablets. She doesn’t always hear it, but I’m a light sleeper, so I go in and turn it off. Then I put the kettle on for her coffee. She’s not very good in the morning, but

I do admit she’s better than me. I’m extremely grumpy and shouty and tired. I take in Mum’s coffee with her Nomad, which has her tablets in. It has compartments with a different day and time for each pill. Sometimes when she’s tired I just put them in her mouth and say “Swallow,” because otherwise they sit there on her tongue going soggy.

I help her get onto the commode, then I get her breakfast — usually a nice cereal bar with yoghurt, cranberries and nuts — and I have a bowl of whole-grain cereal, sitting on my bed. Mum has a Mitrofanoff, which helps her go to the toilet because she can’t wee normally. She doesn’t have a belly button: she has a big hole, which she keeps covered to stop infection getting in. Instead of going for a wee, she threads a sterile tube into her stomach, past two valves inside, then her bladder empties into a jug, called the receiver.

I empty the receiver down the toilet and rinse it all out with distilled water to make sure it’s sterile. A few months ago we finally got a disabled-facilities grant to install a shower. That’s changed her life, and mine. I used to wash her back every morning with a bowl of hot water and a flannel. She didn’t have a bath or a shower for seven years.

I have a wash, get dressed and pack my bag, and make my lunch for school. I put in cucumber, tomatoes, a sandwich, a drink and some fruit and sometimes a packet of crisps. I usually make Mum a Marmite or peanut-butter sandwich and a drink to keep in the fridge. Or I’ll put out a plate and a cup and leave some bread in the toaster, covered over, so she can push it down and butter it later. She can’t use the kitchen. Everything is too high and she can’t reach anything.

Sometimes I don’t want to go to school. Mum always says: “Go on, I’m fine.” But I’m nervous all day that she’s going to fall out of her wheelchair — she’s done that before. She smacked her head on the parquet flooring once, and ever since then I’ve worried. Mum doesn’t know this, and I try not to show it but it makes it very hard to concentrate.

I’ve been given the job of doing the registers, so I have to be in school early. We give them out to 9 or 10 classes, and the teachers want them in a specific place or they get cross. They’re quite fussy. If you put a dinner register in the wrong classroom you miss a playtime.

I’m on a table with a lot of help at the moment. I find most things quite difficult, actually. I’m not exactly very bright. When I was in year four, some children made fun of me. They called me a spastic and a retard because my mum’s in a wheelchair. Nobody likes me. I only have one friend, who sits next to me, but nobody gets what my life is like. I try to be positive. Mum is always saying: “Remember, PMA: positive mental attitude.” But it’s hard. I just want my mum to be able to do ordinary things like meet me from school, but she can’t do that because she doesn’t have the right wheelchair and we can’t afford a Motability car. It means we’re stuck. It hurts a lot when I go to other people’s houses and everything is normal.

A carer comes to school to collect me and makes tea, and Mum and me chat about my day and do homework hour. I’m practising my spelling and handwriting. Mum likes me to go to activities like Guides, but unless there’s a carer here in the evening, there’s no one to pick me up, so I can’t go. I did do gymnastics, but I got so bored. I really wasn’t enjoying it any more. It was frustrating for Mum because she used to be a qualified gymnastics coach. Last summer we put her chair and a mattress in the garden and she taught me to do backward walkovers. Mum’s been asked to join the Kent wheelchair-volleyball team to train for the Paralympic squad. She’d love to, but she can’t, can she? She can’t get out of the house.

After lunchtime on a Saturday, when the carer has gone, we’re housebound. We do homework and watch TV. We always have the same dinner on Saturdays because we’re so limited in what we can cook. Mum can’t reach the cooker, so we eat packet microwave pasta, which I’ve gone right off since my healthy-eating thing. That’s really desperate, that is. Or we have a jacket potato.

Most of the time we hide what we feel from each other, but sometimes I shout and scream: “Leave me alone!” Then I lie on my bed and cry, and after that I feel a bit better. I wish I had someone else to talk to. Children just don’t understand. The Princess Royal Trust for Carers arrange outings and activities, but that’s all about forgetting your troubles for a day. You never really know what’s going on with anyone else. You can’t exactly go round asking.

I go to bed at 9pm. At the moment I’m having quite bad dreams about secondary school. Mum says it will be a new start, but I keep thinking I won’t fit in. The last thing I do is find Puppy. I’ve had him since I was a baby, and Mum’s mended him so many times. He’s had new eyes, a new nose, and now he’s almost bald. She says I’m too old for him now, but I don’t care — he makes me feel safe. I’d never sleep without him.

The Sunday Times Magazine and Miracles, the charity, have set up a fund for Lauren and her mother. For details contact miracles@fastnet.co.uk

Miracles, P.O. Box 3003, Littlehampton, West Sussex, PN16 1SY www.miraclesthecharity.org

Times recommends

• Live chat: Thrifty ways to update your winter wardrobe
• Is anybody out there really listening?
• Nutrition Q&A: Will eating late make me fat?