DESCRIBED by her best friend as “the most bubbly girl I have ever met”, mum of one Nichola Southey remains unconscious six months after an asthma attack.

Now her loved ones have kicked off a £10,000 appeal to buy a specialist sensory wheelchair which they hope will help her recovery.

The 38-year-old, from Bicester, had battled asthma since she was a child, but a bad attack at a friend’s 18th birthday party last October changed things forever.

Partygoers called an ambulance and Nichola was given adrenaline, but suffered a heart attack before falling unconscious.

She has been in Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital ever since – and the family fear she will never wake up again.

On Friday, some of Nichola’s best friends held a 1980s-themed fancy dress party and a raffle in her honour.

Hundreds of revellers packed the Highfield Social Club, in George Street, Bicester, to party the night away in a bid to raise as much cash as possible.

One of the organisers, Johanna Watts, of Buckingham Road, Bicester, said Nichola’s friends had been desperate to do something practical to help their pal.

She said: “Nichola was always a very positive person even though she was told many times her chronic asthma could prevent her living a normal life.”

Best friend Clare Twizell tra-velled from Germany to show her support.

She said: “Nichola is just the most bubbly girl I have ever met in my life.”

Nichola, who had worked for the Ministry of Defence in Bicester, as well as at a travel agency, was left brain-damaged after she was starved of oxygen for 12 minutes.

She can breathe by herself and her family believes that she still feels emotions and pain, and can hear. She is not in a coma or on a life-support machine, but has been left blind.

Her state is similar to Locked-In Syndrome, where a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate verbally.

Her mother Pat Holmes, of Lincoln Close, Bicester, who cares for Nichola’s daughter Madison, four, said she has been overwhelmed by the kindness of her daughter’s friends.

She said: “I felt very touched by all Nichola’s friends coming forward to do this for her.”

See facebook.com/thenicholasouthyappeal