EXCLUSIVE: Oliver Sausins was a healthy and adventurous nine-year-old boy when he suddenly lost the ability to walk after a ‘spontaneous’ internal bleed – his father has now spoken out
An adventurous little boy who was “perfectly healthy” suddenly had his world turned upside down – after collapsing in school two and a half years ago.
Oliver Sausins was nine when he complained about a sore back after having fun in the playground. Hours later he was being operated on by neurosurgeons who found that a “spontaneous” internal bleed had left him paralysed. His father, Daniel, has courageously opened up about his son’s struggles, in the hopes of raising enough money for a specialised wheelchair attachment that will let him move independently at his beloved beach.
Explaining what life was like before the injury, Daniel, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, told the Mirror: “Oliver loved the outdoors. He has his twin sister and she has always been the home body but Oliver has always been the adventurous one. He likes going out there and if there is a tree to climb he would be climbing it trying to get as high as possible.
“What you would think the standard nine-year-old boy would be like. He loved his bike, that was one of his favourite things, racing them up and down outside the house.”
But for Oliver, who developed passions for rugby and steam engines, life would never be the same after a traumatic day on December 1, 2022.
He was in the playground at lunch when he reported having a sore back. After being advised to sit down, he soon got up to queue for class once the bell rang and suddenly collapsed.
After being called, Daniel arrived at the school reception where his boy was lying on the waiting chairs with staff members circling around him.
He remembered: “It was pretty clear straight away something was really wrong. One of his pupils had blown out and I have done a lot of first aid courses with my work and I realised there was some sort of internal struggle going on.”
The ambulance arrived and bluelighted the child to hospital where a CT scan uncovered a mass against his spinal cord. Experts suggested it may be cancer and he was taken to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children where he immediately went into theatre with a neurosurgeon for up to seven hours.
After removing parts of his vertebrae, rather than discover an expected tumour, they found an active bleed.
This has since been described as a spontaneous internal bleed that started to fill the cavity where his spinal cord was, which compressed it and left him becoming T3 paraplegic.
Unsurprisingly, Daniel described it as an “absolutely life-changing” event that nobody saw coming. And to this day, they still have no clear reason for what triggered the internal bleed.
He said: “One day everything is normal and the next day my two other children are living in their grandparents’ house for six months and they haven’t got their brother there. Our whole house has to be rebuilt to accommodate his needs.”
The family have spent up to £150,000 of their own money turning their Victorian terrace from a three bedroom home into a four bedroom home with wet rooms, a lift and accessible height counters in the kitchen with the outside area being levelled off to allow for a wheelchair.
Daniel said Oliver, who spent six months in hospital, was the “strongest person I’ve ever known” but acknowledged that things have been challenging in recent times.
He explained: “For an 11-year-old, you shouldn’t have to compromise about what you do or where you go. You do start to see yourself not being invited to certain things and you wonder whether people are scared to ask or don’t want to ask.
“He sees his friends are chatting about going places. The world is not fair and I don’t expect him to be invited to everything, but if his friends are going out places, there are places he can go, I just think people at times don’t see that. He gets upset knowing his friends are doing things he can’t go to.”
But while certain things like the above example are out of Daniel’s control, there is one thing he wants to do for his son to make life a little better.
He explained how the beach is a favourite spot for his three children, and how even now, Oliver still finds comfort there.
The family has always ditched holidays abroad to instead go to beaches in Cornwall and Devon but the problem with Oliver’s current wheelchair is that it immediately sinks in the sand. They have now set up a GoFundMe to raise money for a vital attachment that will clip on to his current chair.
And giving insight into how problematic things are without it, the dad said: “If you want to pull or drag him, from his point of view, he does find that a little bit embarrassing. He is shy at times.
“Unfortunately, with his injury, he is a focal point so seeing me with a couple of straps around his wheelchair pulling him like a horse and carriage, he is aware that he can’t go off and do his own thing.
“He has to drag himself on the floor and when he is on the beach he can’t just wheel down and go into the sea for his bucket of water for his sandcastle. That sort of thing.
“It is just about giving him the freedom and the ability to be and do what he wants himself after having such a s*** few years out of this. There is already enough stuff that he can’t do – and I want to try and give him something he can do in an environment that he still loves.”
The family has been quoted £5,250 for the specialised wheelchair attachment that glides on the sand, and to make a donation, you can do so here.