Mother refused to accept doctors' advice on sick son

A mother's determination meant that her son was alive and well yesterday, after doctors had told her and her husband to take him home to die.

When heart experts told Joshua Law's parents, Janet and John, they could not do anything for him, Mrs Law refused to accept this and put out an appeal on local radio. Specialists at Birmingham Children's Hospital were alerted and offered to help.

Joshua, who was born at Rotherham District General Hospital in South Yorkshire, had a serious heart abnormality and had been taken to Killingbeck Hospital in Leeds, West Yorkshire. There his parents say they were told there was nothing doctors there could do.

But Joshua (pictured right in his mother's arms) was admitted to the Birmingham hospital and, after a two-day wait, a pounds 13,000 open-heart operation was carried out. He was given the all-clear 72 hours later.

He will need a second operation but will be able to live a normal life. His mother said: "They [the doctors] said it would be better to take him back to Rotherham and let him die peacefully because they could do nothing to save him I wouldn't accept that.

"I knew there must be something that could be done, you can't give up. How many parents in our position would have accepted what we were told and yet now Joshua will be able to lead a perfectly normal life?"

A spokeswoman for Killingbeck Hospital said that officials could not discuss individual cases but "whatever decision was taken was a clinical decision".