Op gives cerebral palsy boy chance to star at football
JUDE Liversage used to cry before sports day because he didn’t want to come last.
Now, thanks to life-changing surgery, the seven-year-old is looking forward to starring on the football field, performing sliding tackles and scoring goals.
The £30,000 operation should also prevent him being confined to a wheelchair by the age of 20.
Jude has cerebral palsy and before the surgery his legs were so stiff that he walked on his tiptoes.
He often fell while playing football, leaving him covered in bruises and risking broken bones.
His father Tony, a 40-year-old financial adviser, said: ‘He told us, “I really want the operation, I want to be able to walk better. I want to be able to play football and score goals.”’
Jude, from Stoke- on-Trent, had an operation called selective dorsal rhizotomy, in which some of the nerves running between the muscles and spine are cut, relaxing stiff muscles and allowing the legs to move more normally.
The NHS is evaluating the procedure and eventually 200 children a year could have it. But for now access is limited and waiting lists are long.
Knowing that the operation is best done before the age of ten, Jude’s family set about raising the funds themselves. The operation went ahead this month after the Portland Hospital in central London made up the shortfall.
Janene Madden, the hospital’s CEO, said Jude’s story had touched everyone’s heart. The family still needs £5,000 for costs such as physiotherapy.
Mr Liversage, who regularly takes Jude the five-hour round-trip from the Midlands to watch Chelsea FC, said: ‘He is a very, very determined little boy. His main ambition is to feel like all the other boys.
‘It would be heartbreaking for him to be in a wheelchair. This operation will prevent that.’