Intense pain led boy to beg mum to amputate leg
FAMILY HOPE TO RAISE £100K FOR SPECIAL TREATMENT IN USA
A YOUNG boy begged his mum to get his leg amputated after he was diagnosed with a condition so excruciatingly painful it is nicknamed the ‘suicide disease.’
Dillon Wilford, 10, from Bolton, had been healthy before he woke up in great pain.
His heartbroken family spent months trying to find a diagnosis before he was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in late January. The syndrome can cause persistent severe and debilitating pain.
The condition is so sensitive that even the slightest touch to the affected area causes severe pain. The cause of CRPS is not known, but the rare condition can often be the result of the body’s abnormal reaction to an injury.
Dillon first started showing symptoms back in November 2021 when he woke up with a limp – he spent the day at school but by the end of the day he was left in debilitating pain. After months of hospital visits and many stumped professionals, Dillion was finally diagnosed with
CRPS by a doctor in his local Bolton Hospital.
Dillon’s mum, Melanie Wilford, is now trying to raise £100,000 to take Dillon to America to get specialised treatment not available in the UK.
Single mum-of-four Melanie, 47, and her daughter Maddison, 24, have been helping to care for the inpain schoolboy.
Melanie, a student nurse, said: “We’re raising 100k for him to send him to America, a clinic in Arkansas. It includes light therapy, oxygen treatment, they do things that they don’t in this country to look at his condition. It’s a 16-week treatment and it’s every single day. They do over 120 blood tests – they haven’t even tested his blood over here.
“There’s no known cure for CRPS but they can get people into remission. Once you’ve got CRPS you’ve got it for life. But once you go to America, they get you walking again. People I’ve spoken to in other countries don’t seem to get it back after they’ve had the treatment in the US.”
“He screams every night. The first sound I hear when I wake up is my son screaming.”
Poor Dillon’s condition is so severe that his mum can’t even touch the affected area without her son being subject to horrific pain.
She said: “He’s begged me to have his leg removed. He told me he wanted to die. It’s horrific to watch my cheeky boy end up like this.”