Shrewsbury boy is laughing again after fight against illness
Little Jay Peach is just like any other toddler, laughing with his brothers Kyron and Jake and getting into mischief.
Yet just a few months ago he was fighting for his life in hospital after being struck down with a rare disease.
The poorly two-year-old could not even blow out his own birthday candles after he was struck down with meningoencephalitis, a virus that attacks the part of the brain that controls movement.
Jay spent months in hospital and his mother, Kelly Sheffield, was told he would never walk or talk again.
Kelly, of Castlefields, Shrewsbury, refused to give up on her son, who was finally allowed home in February.
But his life is very different now and he is confined to a wheelchair.
But Kelly, 22, and her partner Jamie Peach, 32, are determined that Jay will walk again.
Kelly is preparing to take part in a charity skydive to fund the physiotherapy she believes will help Jay regain the use of his legs.
She will be announcing details for the 10,000ft jump at a later date.
" Jay is now in a wheelchair and I had to get used to giving him all his medication. Trying to get my other children's meals sorted all at the same time was a challenge, but we just had to find a way through it."
Despite his recovery, Jay has an incurable condition, a side effect of the virus. Kelly said: "He still has dystonia and at the moment he only has one hour of physio a week. I know he'll walk again, I believe in him and so do his doctors but at the moment the wheelchair that he is in is horrible."
Dystonia causes painful muscle contractions and spasms that left Jay crying out in pain, and he had to be sedated when he was in hospital.
Kelly said: "I had to explain to his brothers that it wasn't going to be the same Jay coming home, there's no point thinking back to what he used to be like, but he's still got the same sense of humour, the only thing that has changed about him is his movement."
Jay was diagnosed with a virus in his brain, and Kelly has praised staff at Birmingham Children's Hospital for saving his life.
About 2,000 children are diagnosed with meningoencephalitis every year in the UK – but Kelly was told Jay was fighting a particularly rare strain.
She was pregnant with Jake when Jay was diagnosed, and she believes the stress caused the onset of early labour.
"Of course it was awful but you can't look back," she said. "It has definitely made us stronger as a family, it's been incredibly hard but we are so lucky he's still here. I decided to do a sky dive so raise money for Jay's therapy sessions, I can't even go up a ladder and I'm absolutely dreading it.I'll be jumping 10, 000 feet but Jay is worth it.
"He's more then a miracle to me.Whatever happens now I'll know we will get through."
