86 operations but Taylor is still smiling

Terri Lewsley, 27, is in awe of her little boy’s unstoppable strength and determination

- FRANCES LEATE, JESS GRIEVSON-SMITH

Reaching forwards as far as he could, my son, Taylor, six, popped a 2p piece in the arcade coin pusher. ‘Look, Mum, they’re ready to drop,’ he grinned, staring through the glass in anticipation, his face lighting up at the tinkle of coins dropping from the machine. The arcades are his favorite part of our trips to Mablethorpe seaside on the Lincolnshire coast, and he’s always on the go with a wide cheeky grin on his face.

Yet, while he’s a typical little boy who loves toy cars and football, it’s also clear to any onlookers that he’s very different, too. With both legs missing from the knee down and just the palms of his hands with makeshift fingers doctors created from his remaining flesh, Taylor has to work harder than most to make sure he never misses out on the simplest things.

It was the early hours of one morning in April 2015 when the sound of eight-month-old Taylor’s high-pitched cries wrenched me out of bed in a panic. It was a cry unlike anything I’d heard before, and when I discovered him lying in his cot, his face pale and eyes barely opening, I called for an ambulance and we were blue-lighted Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham.

He’d seemed fine when I’d put him to bed the previous evening, but by the time we arrived, a strange purple rash had spread across his tummy and down his legs and the doctor told me he had meningitis. The words waves of panic crashing through my body. ‘Is he going to survive?’ I sobbed.