Shrewsbury boy Harry, 5, doing well after life-saving liver donation from dad
He is the blond haired little Shrewsbury boy who stole the hearts of the nation when he appeared on national TV to highlight the need for organ donors.
But now, just six weeks after he underwent a liver transplant, the five-year-old is back to his boisterous self.
Harry Maceachen received part of his father Simon's liver in the transplant, which was the second he has undergone in his short life.
But all went well and he is now on the road to recovery.
His mum Clare, 40, from Herongate, said: "We are feeling very positive and it's very impressive.
"Harry had a lot of admissions to hospital last year. He kept getting a lot of repeated infections.
"We didn't know why and the surgeons made the call last September that the liver was showing signs of chronic damage
"But they didn't actually know until they took him into theatre why he kept getting repeat infections. He actually had clots in his hepatic artery so the main blood source in to the liver was completely clotted.
"The blood had rerouted itself because blood is very clever that way. So he had a lot of A and B tributaries going in to the liver."
She added: "So that was his big shock for the surgeons in theatre. They were not expecting that but is does answer a lot of question.
"Now they have got a plan in place. He has got a new hepatic artery and they are very, very pleased with him. He has absolutely sailed though it."
She added: "This time he went back on the ward and once he started getting better it was huge leaps and bounds. He has eaten the hospital out of house and home – and a lot of the liver children, and certainly the post transplant children, have a lot of feeding issues and have to be tube fed and so on.
"The only time in his life that he has had to be tube fed was for the 48 hours after this transplant while he was in intensive care.
"He has got more energy now. "
Clare said: "There were about 70 transplants a year between the three centres, between Birmingham, Leeds and King's College, London but out of the three of them I think that Birmingham did well over half of them."
Harry and his 41-year-old dad, who works at Shirehall, Shrewsbury, will spend the next two months recovering from their operations.
The youngster was born with biliary atresia, which meant he had blocked bile ducts and had his first liver transplant aged one.
