Josh Mitchell

Josh was born by c/section on 10th April 2002, he weighed only 4lb 9oz, a bit on the small side but perfectly healthy.

Everything was going fine until he was 16 days old. It was a Thursday at around 2pm, Josh was getting very restless and would sleep so I thought he had a bit of wind so treated him as though he had and thought a nice bath might help, but it didn't. At around 9pm things started to go very wrong.

It all started with a high-pitched scream, his left eye was bulging and his whole left side went rigid, this only lasted about ten seconds. When this started we became very worried and called the doctor. He didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with him and told us to treat him for wind.

These activities continued through the night and at 7.30 am the following morning, Josh went limp and seemed to stop breathing. We rushed him straight to the hospital. We had only been there a few minutes when he stopped breathing again; when he "came to" he started jerking.

Josh was rushed to Yorkhill Children's' Hospital in Glasgow for tests. When he arrived he had allsorts of tests. CT, MRI, EEG, ECG which at the time meant nothing to us, just letters, but we knew that something serious was wrong. The doctors said that Josh's brain was so swollen that they didn't think he was going to make it through the night, but "thank god", he did!!

It was four days later that they told us he had suffered a stroke and there was a blood clot on the left side of his brain. We were stunned, we thought stroke only affected older people, I'd never heard of young people, never mind babies having a stroke.

When he was discharged from hospital we watched his every move terrified in case he had another stroke. Josh has been left brain damaged on the left side of his brain, so he has a weakness on the right side of his body. He was doing really well and making good progress until he was about seven months old, when he started having seizures again. His doctor said that it was a form of epilepsy and the damaged part of his brain was causing it. He had endless amount of medicines but none seemed to help him, then he stopped interacting. He didn't smile or cry he just stared into space; it was horrible to see him like that. It took three months to control his seizures and a combination of three different medicines; he's also on aspirin to thin his blood.

The seizures set him back a little, but he's now making good progress. Josh still can't sit up on his own but in time I'm sure he will.

Josh is such a happy boy and he's fun to be around, we wouldn't change him for the world. His best friend in the whole world is his big brother Jack; he seems to like him better than anybody. As Jack is only six years old he doesn't understand any of Josh's condition, but he's very proud of his baby brother and so are we.

Thanks to Josh's Parents Helen & Darren for sending in his profile. Anyone else who would like to share their story can send it along with a photograph (if you're not shy!)

• c/o PROFILES,
• Click here for address