Victoria fights back after meningitis

Rebecca Gough A LITTLE girl who lost both her lower legs to meningitis late last year has returned to her regular marshal arts club and competed her way to her first award.

Rebecca Gough

A LITTLE girl who lost both her lower legs to meningitis late last year has returned to her regular marshal arts club and competed her way to her first award.

Victoria Watson, six, was released from hospital just weeks ago after almost losing her life to the condition. But since then she has thrown herself back into everyday life and took pride of place at an awards ceremony at her Thetford jujitsu group.

Victoria was on holiday with her aunt and brother in Great Yarmouth in October last year when she began to feel ill and tired.

As her symptoms worsened she was rushed to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge where she fell into a coma and was diagnosed with type B meningitis.

She was on a ventilator for more than two weeks as her body covered with lesions and her legs blackened.

Although she eventually came round and began to sit up and speak, she remained seriously ill and in November last year had her legs amputated below the knee.

She is now left with scars across her body and although previously right handed cannot straighten her right fingers and so uses her left hand to write and draw.

Her mother, Donna, 28, who also has three other children, nine-year-old Leon, seven-year-old Kieran and Oliver, three, and is staying with her mother in Eriswell, near Thetford, said: “For her to have only been back two weeks and to remember everything she'd been taught before was brilliant.”

Victoria, who attends Queensway Infant and Junior School, was presented with her red and white belt at Thetford Leisure Centre on Croxton Road.