As his mum and dad watch their football mad son Dylan Walton striding out to play for his team they are, like typical parents, filled with pride – but also a sense of disbelief.
Just a year ago he lay gravely ill in a hospital bed facing death as they sat in despair at his bedside.
Dylan’s liver was on the brink of total failure and doctors had warned his stunned parents he would die within 24 hours without a transplant.
But the battling four-year-old Man United fan was hanging on to score the goal of his life – to get back home and play with the 20-month-old sister he adored.
Mum Sian said: “It was heartbreaking. He kept asking if the doctors could give him a new liver so that he could go home to Elin.
“We knew he literally had hours to live without a transplant, and all he wanted to do was get back to his sister. We prayed it would arrive in time to save him.”
Their prayers seemed to be answered when doctors said a donor liver had been found – but still their ordeal wasn’t over.
“They warned us if anything held it up – if the retrieval team got stuck in any traffic or if it arrived and wasn’t in a suitable condition, then it would be too late for him.”
But Dylan got the right result. The liver he yearned for arrived and the six-hour transplant operation took place in the nick of time – making him one of just 77 children under 16 to have received a new liver in the UK last year.
Sian, a 30-year-old hospital administrator, and husband Ross, 32, a construction site manager, had no inkling of the drama in store when Dylan went down with what seemed like a sickness bug at the family home in Bridgend, South Wales.
“He had been sick in the mornings for four days and was under the weather,” said Sian.
“We thought it was a bug. He’d been absolutely fine, we’d just been on holiday to Jersey.
“Then one morning he woke up and his skin looked yellow. Just a few hours later his eyes had gone yellow too and we took him to hospital straight away. We knew something was seriously wrong.”
Dylan’s diagnosis at the Princess of Wales Hospital stunned his parents.
Sian said: “His liver function tests were sky high and the scans showed that he was suffering from acute liver failure.”
Dylan was immediately rushed to the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and taken straight to the intensive care unit.
Sian and Ross were told by doctors that it had been caused by adenovirus – a flu-like virus that can commonly cause mild infections but sometimes severe ones too.
“We couldn’t believe it as just a few days before he had been perfectly healthy,” said Sian. “It was such a terrifying time for us. They told us that he needed a transplant urgently to survive. And he needed it within 24 hours. We were terrified we were going to lose him.”
But Dylan had just one thing on his mind. “He just wanted to know if he could go home to see Elin. It was heartbreaking to hear.
“All he wanted to do was get back to his sister,” said Sian. “It was awful waiting for him to come back up from theatre, but the surgeon told us it had been successful, which was such a relief.”
A week later, Dylan developed a perforated bowel, followed by fluid on his lungs and an infection which needed to be treated with steroids, but he pulled through.
Sian said: “It wasn’t an easy recovery for him and he was in hospital for five weeks in total.
“But, eventually, we were able to take him home to Elin.
“They were utterly thrilled to see each other and be reunited. They already had a very close bond and now they are inseparable.
“He is very protective of her and she follows him around everywhere. She doesn’t let him out of her sight,”
Like his parents, Elin loves seeing her brother playing football - something that just a few months ago no one could have imagined him doing again. He has now joined the Spanish Soccer School in nearby Bryncethin and loves it.
And mum Sian is now in training too – she’s running the London Marathon next month, raising money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital to give back after they saved her son.
“It’s wonderful to see how well he is doing,” she said.
“He loves playing football. He’s so full of energy again and runs around everywhere, which is great to see after all he’s been through.”
Dylan has to have scans and a biopsy of his liver every year to check it is still working properly. But he feels fighting fit and is on track to start school in September.
Sian said: “We feel very lucky that we can get on with our lives. Dylan has been such a fighter and he’s making the most of every day now, with his sister by his side.’”
Husband Ross added: “Watching Dylan go through this was heartbreaking. We didn’t know if he was going to pull through. When the doctors said they had found him a liver we knew that he had a chance. To watch him now playing with Elin is amazing. She was the one thing that kept him going through it.”
And Dylan said: “Playing with Elin again is the best thing ever. And I love playing football now too.”
A spokesman for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation said: “In very young children the most usual reason for needing a transplant would be that they have been born with liver disease, rather than having a virus.
“There is a shortage of organs available for donation and parents go through severe anxiety when they are told that their child’s only option is a liver transplant.
“It’s brilliant news that Dylan received his new liver so quickly."
To donate to Sian’s fundraising run click here.
