Future is bright for injured boy

BRAVE YOUNGSTER’S TALE WILL BE USED IN A BID TO RAISE CHARITY CASH AFTER HORROR ACCIDENT

A FAMILY have today told of their ordeal after their son lost one of his legs in a horror accident.

Lewis Kelly fell from a quad bike and a lawnmower attached to the back almost entirely severed one of his legs.

Now thanks to treatment he received in Glasgow, the brave eight-year-old is looking forward to learning to ski and snowboard.

IT WAS a shock accident that would have left any family devastated.

When schoolboy Lewis Kelly fell from the back of a quad bike, a lawnmower attached to the back of the bike almost entirely severed one of his legs.

But – thanks to treatment he received in Glasgow – the brave eight-year-old is now looking forward to learning to ski and snowboard.

Lewis was airlifted to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow following the accident on his family’s farm in October, 2015.

The courageous youngster was conscious throughout his ordeal and even comforted mum Emily Davidson as he was taken to hospital.

On arrival in Glasgow from Dumfries, a medical team was forced to amputate Lewis’s injured leg and, in the first of seven operations, parts of Lewis’s ankle were attached to his knee to allow a belowthe-knee amputation.

Emily said: “We have been on a rollercoaster ride since October 2015, none of which we would ever want to see or experience again.

“Lewis has been an absolute megastar throughout and has never once complained about losing his leg. He has charged on regardless and sees everything as a challenge but he was always that kind of boy anyway, a real outdoor kid.”

At the beginning of the year Lewis received his first prosthetic leg and is receiving physiotherapy as he learns how to adapt to it. He has already had a taster session of amputee football and hopes one day to be able to ride a bike again with support from his mum and dad, Semple Kelly, 52.

Emily, 40, is telling Lewis’s story for the first time in order to support a £150,000 funding bid for Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity.

Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity is the new name for Yorkhill Children’s Charity, now that Yorkhill has closed and the new Royal Hospital for Children has opened on the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Campus.

The charity is launching its new name today – and launching a bid to raise cash for a surgical microscope that can be used in a range of procedures including facial reconstruction, cleft surgery, tumour removal and lower limb reconstruction.

Mr Craig Russell, lead for paediatric plastic surgery NHSGGC, said: “The new surgical microscope would have greatly helped Lewis, who sustained a significant lower leg injury recently.

“Part of his foot was attached to just below his knee as the bits in between were destroyed in the injury and not salvageable.

“While the operation was a success, he had to have extra operations to revise the reconstruction.

“I saw him recently as he was wheeling himself out of the hospital in his wheelchair. He was telling me how once he gets his prosthetic leg he is looking forward to learning to ski and snowboard.

“Without the operation he had, the options for this would have been more limited as he would have had to have a much more proximal amputation.

“While his surgeries have been a success he would have had a much less traumatic treatment course had, on the night of the injury, we had access to this equipment.”

The level of detail provided by the microscope, which would be the first of its kind in a children’s hospital in Scotland, gives surgeons the ability to make more informed decisions.

According to Mr Russell, a