A "beautiful" boy has been unable to walk, talk or eat after he was found unresponsive in his cot. Carter Daley was found face down by his mum, Alisha, on April 12.
The 17-month-old, from Sale, has gone from a happy healthy boy who 'lit up a room with his smile' to acting like a 'newborn baby'. Doctors are unable to explain the mystery illness and cannot say whether Carter will ever recover.
His family now face a race against time to raise £30,000 for treatment to save him from permanent brain damage. Carter's gran, Louise Cowman has launched a GoFundMe in a bid to pay for lifeline therapy in America before his second birthday.
READ MORE: Woman dies after late-night moorland road crash
The gran-of-four told the Mirror : "It's so heart-breaking to know that he literally lit up every room and he was just the happiest baby. He no longer says any words, he's fed on an NG tube so he can't swallow at the moment, he's lost his sight, and when he first came out a coma he wasn't able to move.
"We were hoping that when he came round he would be the same Carter, the same boy and he's just not."
The Dynamic Movement Intervention (DMI) Therapy will teach Carter the same skills again in the hopes that the remaining undamaged white matter of his brain will pick it up and step in where the damaged parts of his brain are no longer working. But the intensive therapy is only available in America, and the family must get Carter there before he turns two, when his brain will no longer be as receptive to the treatment.
Louise said: "We have done our homework and found an intensive therapy which could help Carter regain some movement through Neuroplasticity. It's like teaching a newborn how to do things, and to get a different part of the brain to learn how to do that.
"But it's a race against time because we understand from speaking to the nurses that once he turns two his brain will be less receptive to this kind of therapy."
Carter who has an older sister, Sophia, four, had been enjoying family life and reaching all his milestones when he came down with tonsillitis in February this year. Not long after falling ill with the throat infection the tot suffered a febrile seizure, a common kind of seizure in babies which often occurs when they have a fever.
A month later, he developed a persistent cough which GPs "insisted was a virus and reluctantly prescribed him antibiotics for", Louise added. But on April 12, Carter had been laughing and playing, just hours before his mum noticed on the baby monitor that he was face down in his cot.
Alisha found her son was unresponsive and had to perform CPR to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived. Doctors at Wythenshawe Hospital performed CT scans and X-rays as they attempted to find what was causing Carter to have multiple seizures.
They discovered he had pneumonia as he continued to rapidly deteriorate. With his symptoms worsening, two days later he was transferred to Manchester Children's Hospital and was placed into an induced coma to protect his brain.
For weeks, he lay in a coma and after a second MRI scan, his parents Alisha and Liam were given the devastating news that Carter had suffered extensive neurological damage. Carter was brought round after weeks under sedation but when he woke up he was not the same little boy that had gone to sleep.
Louise said: "It's frustrating not knowing what's happened and why it's happened. His parents can't deal with it or process it emotionally.
"Once you get a diagnosis you think 'that explains that' and then you deal with it. But when you've got no answers its really difficult, you're grieving a baby that is still here.
"You're grieving the loss of your boy but he's still here in body, but not here in mind, he's not the same child. You have a perfectly baby that is passing all his milestones, laughing and playing, and then overnight you are left with a totally different child."
On the GoFundMe, Carter's devastated parents wrote: "No one can ever begin to comprehend grieving a child you have lost forever while they are physically here, pure and utter torture, we are completely heartbroken. We continue to pray, surrounding his room with love, happiness, memories and comforts for our beautiful boy who lit up the room with his smile and hope that he can continue to do so in the future."
Read more of today's top stories here
READ NEXT:
