A young boy who was diagnosed with a 'rare suicide disease' has begged his mum to have his leg amputated.
Dillon Wilford, from Bolton, was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in January this year.
The condition means that he is constantly in excruciating pain that will not go away and 'screams every night'.
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The 10-year-old first noticed there was an issue in November last year when he woke up with a limp, but it took months for him to get a proper diagnosis.
His mum Melanie recalled: "There was no trigger for it. It was completely random, he woke up one morning and he was limping.
"That night he screamed all night horrifically. The next day I took him to A&E and they said there was nothing wrong with him.
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"It’s only by luck that we saw a different doctor who asked me to tell the whole story and said I know what it was."
She went on: "It is known as the suicide disease. It affects their mental health that badly. He couldn’t use his crutches anymore as he was in hospital bed-bound a lot. I was worried he’d waste away to nothing.
"He screams every night. The first sound I hear when I wake up is my son screaming. He screams all the time. He has to wear shorts."
Melanie said the pain is so bad that Dillon screams when she touches him and has even asked to have his leg amputated.
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The 47-year-old said: "One day he was eating a strawberry one tiny seed fell off and hit his leg and he screamed. If he gets a cat hair on his leg, he screams.
"It's 12cm above his knee all the way down to his feet, his right leg.
"This is hell, absolute hell. It's like a life sentence for a child. In America they do cut-price amputations in the US for people with CRPS.
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"I’m speaking to one woman who had to have her arm removed as the pain was that bad.
"He’s begged me to have his leg removed. He told me he wanted to die. It’s horrific to watch my cheeky boy end up like this.
"People need to know how bad it is. For a little boy who has this, he hasn’t been to school in three months."
She added: "There’s no known cure for CRPS but they can get people into remission. Once you’ve got CRPS you’ve got it for life."
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However, the single mum is now trying to raise £100,000 to send Dillon to a clinic in the US for treatment, where she hopes he could get the help he desperately needs.
She said: "It’s a 16-week treatment and it’s every single day. They do more than 120 blood tests – they haven’t even tested his blood test over here. In the UK they don’t do anything like that. Once you go to America, they get you walking again.
"The people I've been speaking to in other countries don’t seem to get it back after they’ve had the treatment in the US.
"It was four weeks between physio appointments and that isn’t on."
You can donate to Dillon's page here.
Dominic Smithers