A battling mum and son are still smiling – months after doctors predicted they would both be dead.
Eight-year-old Callum Wingate is back at home – seven months after he was given no chance of surviving following a holiday swimming pool accident.
Now mum Lorraine Siddle has shown he’s not the only fighter in the family by defying the doctors who told her she would die from cancer before Christmas.
Lorraine, 35, said: “It has been a really tough year, but I’m not giving up and Callum keeps me going.”
A traumatic six months for the family, of Newhall Road, Belle Isle, began when Callum suffered serious brain damage after slipping underwater in Playa Blanca in Majorca last July.
He spent several minutes lying unseen at the bottom of the pool and took 30 minutes to revive after his lifeless body was dragged from the water.
Even then Lorraine and Callum’s father, Robert Wingate, were told they would only be “bringing him home to die”.
But, after lying unresponsive for several weeks in a bed at Leeds General Infirmary, Callum stunned doctors by showing signs of recovery. He can now laugh and say a handful of words and has regained some movement.
“As a mother, I never believed we would lose him,” Lorraine said.
But, just as things were looking up, in October the family was rocked when Lorraine was told she had terminal stomach cancer and would die within eight weeks.
The child minder has made a mockery of those predictions and is now awaiting a further prognosis.
“I just think Callum is a little miracle and he inspires me,” Lorraine added.
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