An inspiration for my brave boy

This is the cover of a book about a very special boy, called Jack Henderson. His brother was unwell and had to make frequent visits to hospital. Jack drew a picture and sold it to a family friend, and this gave him an idea to raise money to help other people in hospital.

He raised so much money that the hospital was able to buy things for the wards - one of which was a portable DVD player which our son was using to help take his mind off things today.

It was a day of complete contrasts. This morning Alex got up and walked with his frame to the end of the ward, then was able to use crutches under supervision of his physio and climb up and down a flight of stairs. I left him resting in the playroom after that huge effort, while I headed out to our cottage to get it prepared for the arrival of our next guests tomorrow.

Just as I finished I got a phone call to say that Alex had had a fall in the ward but that he was ok and back in bed. My first question was "was he on his own?" It transpired that he had been under the supervision of one of the nurses on the ward, but he had also been looking after another patient in a wheelchair who had his attention for a moment, and Alex had taken a tumble from his crutches.

This fall, which left our son in agony once again, meant that we had to have an awful visit to X-Ray again this afternoon to take another look inside his leg to check that the titanium rods were still in the correct place. The wheelchair our son was in was not at the same height as the X-Ray table, so he had to be moved onto an chair which had an adjustable height to then get him on to the X-Ray table. All the time he was yelling about how sore it was.

We got to see how the titanium rods looked in his leg - like long bendy knitting needles!

Simply the worst day so far in hospital - although as I'm back-blipping I can say that we weren't at the bottom yet.