We hope to get home and start life again as a family

WISH OF MUM WHOSE SON WAS LEFT PARALYSED AFTER SUDDENLY FEELING SHARP PAIN

- JAMES HOLT

A SCHOOLBOY who experienced a sharp pain his stomach was paralysed from the neck down and hooked up to a ventilator in hospital just 24 hours later.

Ayuub Al-Asad, from Rochdale, felt the pains in his stomach on March 19. As his symptoms progressed, he started feeling pins and needles in his legs and they began to feel heavy and numb.

Eventually, he became unable to move his legs at all, falling to the living room floor. His mother Hena took him to A&E immediately.

“He’s crying out in pain and he’s like, ‘My arms are burning. My arms feel like they’re on fire. They’re burning. It’s burning’,” she said.

By 8am the following morning, Ayuub, 15, was on oxygen and arrangements were made for him to travel to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where he was sedated and ventilated in the Intensive Care Unit for three months.

He was then diagnosed with acute flaccid myelitis, a condition that affects the spinal cord. He was left paralysed from the neck down, his bladder and bowel stopped working and his diaphragm was paralysed on the left side, leading to a collapsed left lung.