Harvey's showing us the way!

When Carol Parry's little boy Harvey suffered a terrible blow, she wondered how they'd ever recover. But Harvey had his own ideas...

I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as I watched my 15-month-old son, Harvey, toddle round the garden. He'd just started walking so I'd splashed out on a pair of tiny white leather trainers for him.

It was a special moment for me and my husband, Jonathan, 45. You see, before Harvey, we'd been trying for a baby for 20 years. Yes, 20 years!

Finally I gave birth to 5lb 14oz Harvey. We'd waited 20 years for this moment but it had been worth it. Now he'd grown into a chatty, lively toddler.

But two weeks later in January 2007, I noticed Harvey was quieter than normal. He had a temperature and then to my horror, he went floppy in my arms.

An ambulance rushed us to North Middlesex Hospital. That afternoon a purple rash spread over his body.
'It's meningitis,' the doctor told us.
I was speechless as we got in the ambulance to transfer Harvey to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.

My son was unconscious and fighting for breath. His poor little body was turning from purple to black as the meningitis took hold. Suddenly the heart monitor he was attached to started beeping and his body went into spasm.
'What's happening?' I cried.
Jonathan pulled me back as two paramedics started working on him.

At the hospital Harvey was rushed into intensive care.
'We're going to put him on a ventilator while his body fights the meningitis,' a doctor told me.
Two days later, he took a turn for the worse.
'He might not make it through the night,' the doctor warned us.
How could fate be so cruel?

'Please hang on,' I begged.
And somehow he did. He made it through that night. And the next. Two weeks later the doctor tried to take him off the ventilator but one of his lungs collapsed. Again the doctors crowded around him, desperately trying to keep him alive.

But Harvey was a fighter. The doctors brought him back again and a week later, he turned a corner. But there was more devastating news.
'We'll have to amputate his legs,' the doctor told us in February 2007.

The meningitis had led to blood poisoning which had rotted his legs.
'No,' I screamed, keeling over.
Harvey would never wear his little white trainers again.

But Harvey just seemed to accept it. A week after his legs were amputated he was sitting up in bed and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. When he saw us staring from the door he clapped his hands together.

And that's when it hit us. There was no rhyme or reason why we'd been through so much. Why some couples have perfectly healthy babies and why others, like us, have to battle for a family. It's how you dealt with it that counted.

And looking at our happy little boy now I suddenly felt humbled. Harvey was going to show us the way.

In May this year, after four months in hospital, Harvey was allowed home. Today he's doing brilliantly. He's so determined and he uses his arms to drag himself across the floor.

Our dream is to get him some life-like prosthetic legs from Dorset Orthopaedic. At £60,000 they're pricey but if anyone deserves them our Harvey does. We're fundraising our socks off to raise the money.

I've still got Harvey's little white trainers in a drawer. My dream is that one day he'll be able to run in them again.

REAL LIFE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE

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