THE DAD of a boy who lost his limbs to meningitis shared the extraordinary way his son came to terms with his amputation.
The brave little boy said a heartbreaking goodbye to his hands before going into surgery.
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‘Happy and healthy’ Luke Mortimer, who thrived playing rugby, was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with meningitis and septicaemia when he was just seven.
Luke and his family made the difficult decision to have his arms and legs amputated in order to save his life.
The boy and his dad Adam appeared on This Morning to discuss what happened with hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary.
Adam shared that Luke felt unwell one school morning, but his conditions didn’t initially alarm his parents or the medics that checked on him later than evening.
But when the seven-year-old was taken to hospital, it was discovered he had meningitis.
“From there it escalated very quickly indeed,” his dad Adam recalled.
By the time he was able to join his son and wife at the hospital, Luke had broken out in a rash all over his body.
Doctors told the family they needed to put the boy in a coma so he could safely be transferred to Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
Once there, Luke was put on “loads of drugs” and hooked up to a dialysis machine to keep his liver and kidneys going, according to Adam.
“He was fighting for his life at that point,” the dad recalled.
The tot spent six days in intensive care, where doctors determined that “sepsis had taken over”, stopping blood flow to his limbs.
By that time Luke was out of his coma, though still quite heavily sedated – the boy said he felt like he was “sleepwalking”.
“When it’s happening you don’t really have enough time to think about it,” Adam told Alison and Dermot.
When doctors revealed that they would have to amputate Luke’s limbs, they discussed it with the seven-year-old and his parents.
“Initially Luke was mortified by the fact that he would lose his hands,” Adam shared.
But the family sat down with surgeons and psychologists before Luke realised his hands were ‘non-functional.’
Adam told This Morning: “We went down for the surgery and just before the surgery he looked down at his hands and said, “Goodbye my beautiful hands. You’ve served me well.”
Stunned at the boy’s bravery, Dermot simply said: “Wow.”
Luke underwent multiple different surgeries after that – a whopping 23 in a 10 week period, many of which were skin grafts to replace the skin attacked by sepsis on his body.
The family’s home wasn’t equipped to serve Luke, so they sold it and bought a bungalow, which was adapted to meet the tot’s needs by the charity Band of Builders.
Adam praised the team, saying: “The build has helped us immensely – it has got the house to the place we need it to be for Luke to be able to have what he needs at home.”