Four year-old with cerebral palsy can play with his friends for the first time thanks to his new wheelchair – WalesOnline

A young boy with a rare form of cerebral palsy is able to play with his friends at school for the first time thanks to a new powered wheelchair.

Born prematurely at 35 weeks, Alfie Porter-Smith was diagnosed with a rare form of cerebral palsy at just nine-months-old.

The condition left him floppy and unable to walk unaided.

A lack of strength in his right hand also meant he struggled to use a manual wheelchair to power himself along.

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Alfies parents Fiona and Rod, from Dinas Powys, had hoped to raise enough money to pay for advanced rehabilitation treatment and physiotherapy to improve his standard of living.

What Alfie really wanted to be able to do was run around with his friends and keep up with their fun and games, Fiona said.

The family heard about Designability, a national charity which provides life-changing assistive technologies to people with disabilities.

They provided Alfie with a Wizzybug - a powered wheelchair designed especially for children under the age of five.

The chair - which is operated by a simple control system - allows Alfie to move around on his own and fulfil his dream of whizzing around after his friends.

We found out about Designability when a friend of a friend shared the information over Facebook, Fiona said.

Before Wizzy, he had no independence and felt as though he was missing out.

On the first day he took it to school, I stood waiting for him to come out at the end of the day. When I saw him appear in his Wizzybug, with children walking beside him, I cried my eyes out.

He had transformed into the most popular kid in school overnight.

Like any parents, Fiona and Rod want their son to live life to the fullest, no more so because the couple spent all their lifesavings on IVF treatment in a bid to start a family.

After the first round of IVF, Fiona became pregnant with twins but the girls, named Daisy and Matilda, died after she suffered a miscarriage late into pregnancy in March 2011.

She discovered that she had a condition called cervical incompetence and in a bid to improve their chances of starting a family, they flew to America for a pioneering operation called transabdominal cerclage.

The process involved stitching the cervix to make it more secure in pregnancy, but the couple suffered further heartache when Fiona had another miscarriage following a second round of IVF.

Alfie, who is now four, arrived after their third attempt.

He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at nine months but unlike most children with the condition - who are very stiff and rigid - Alfie is the opposite.

Fiona said: Wizzybug is so child-friendly and has filled a gap that the NHS in our area were not able to. It really does come everywhere with us to the cinema, the seaside, the zoo and breaks away. Alfie also likes to take it to church every week.

We feel so passionately about Wizzybugs that I want to spread the word as much as I can with local parents whose children might benefit from one. As Alfie gets older I just know that this start in Wizzybug will have been so important to him.

He absolutely loves it and the rest of the family love it, too.

Alfie's parents set up this website to raise money for his treatment: http://www.walkwithalfie.co.uk

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Four year-old with cerebral palsy can play with his friends for the first time thanks to his new wheelchair - WalesOnline