10 year old amputee takes on charity climbing challenge
Luke Mortimer from Skipton is going to climb Embsay Crag
A 10 year old amputee from Skipton is taking on an epic climbing challenge today.
Three years ago Luke Mortimer lost all his limbs after contracting meningitis. His Dad Adam explains he fell ill in 2019 and was rushed to hospital: "Upon our arrival at Sheffield we went straight to their Intensive Care Unit, where Luke was hooked up to many machines and drugs to help him in his fight for life.
Whilst we were in ICU Luke’s condition was confirmed, Meningococcal Meningitis Scepticemia (type Y) which normally affects only adults. It is Meningitis with the added complication of sepsis. By this time, Luke was also on a dialysis machine in order to keep his liver and kidneys functioning and to try and cool his blood to try to get his body temperature under control. Slowly the drugs started to work and fight the disease, he came of his ventilator after 4 days which felt like a massive step. However we were still waiting for what the doctor’s term demarcation, which was basically to see what areas of skin and limbs had not survived and what if any may return.
Around this time we were moved out of ICU and onto the High Dependency Unit. To start with our time here was mainly a waiting game for the demarcation to finish.
Unfortunately for Luke, the demarcation did not change or improve, all 4 of his limbs were completely affected, and wasn’t too long before a conversation had to be had about him losing his hands. As you can imagine not a good day. To start with Luke did not take this news well but over the following days and lots of conversations he came around the fact that his hands were no longer functional and Luke being Luke just as he was going into surgery said......
‘Thank you my wonderful Hands, you served me well’
After his hand amputations we were still hopeful for his legs, his left foot even started to return to a normal colour. But it wasn’t to be and soon we were having another conversation about him losing his right foot and leg to just below the knee and then after this his left leg and foot as well. As this leg was in a worse condition, the surgeons said they would have to amputate it through the knee joint. To enable Luke to get around without any prosthetic limbs on we had to make the decision of shortening his right leg to match.
After the removal of limbs Luke has undertaken many more surgeries to cover what had survived with a covering of skin. 50% of his body had no skin and so the remaining 50% has had to be donor. To get him healed and to minimise infection he has been going to theatre Monday, Wednesday and Friday, to have skin grafts and dressing changes. In between these surgeries there was physio, psychology, occupational therapy and lots and lots of doctors and consultants prodding poking and checking. Luke had 23 surgeries over a 10 week period."
Today (Saturday November 4th) Luke will climb 656 ft later to the top of Embasy Crag. He tells us he's raising money for a charity close to his heart: "Limbpower who kind of brought my spirit up, because I know there is more people than just me, because when you are disabled and in quite a little Town who feel like you are the only person who is disabled."
"What they want to do is have children, children like them, with them so they can actually understand one another plus as well as that it's about getting away from literally going outside and everybody staring at you."
You can donate to Luke's fundraiser here