‘He’s never let it beat him’– Bradley an inspiration at 13
THIS brave amputee has proudly shown off his stash of prosthetic limbs that he’s worn for a decade since he had his left leg amputated at a West hospital aged three.
Bradley Pedrick, 13, has more than a dozen artificial legs of different designs and sizes after he was born with a devastating four-in-a-million bone disease.
His tibia was broken from birth, meaning he couldn’t walk properly and had to undergo the life-changing amputation of his left leg from the knee down at the age of three.
But now in Year 9 at school, “incredible” Bradley sails every weekend and hopes to become a policeman when he’s older.
Mum Cheryl Collings, 35, said:
“You wouldn’t even know he’s got a prosthetic leg.
“From the start he’s never let it beat him.
“I’ve always let him grow up with the attitude of ‘if you want to do something just do it’.
“He’s had a little bit of bullying in school but he’s got that mindset where he doesn’t let it bother him. He’s incredible.”
Bradley, from St Austell, Cornwall, was bound to a pushchair as a toddler because his left leg never fully developed.
His rare bone disease, called pseudarthrosis, which can result in the tibia breaking, left his left foot three shoe sizes smaller than the other.
Single mum Cheryl found out when Bradley was six weeks old that he had a broken tibia and, when he was three, made the heartbreaking decision to have his leg amputated.
She said: “He didn’t walk until he was two years old but his foot turned in and it was three shoe sizes smaller than the other.
“He limped a lot and had to wear a brace. His leg was just being held by cartilage and tissue.