An emotional morning in Galway as Liam McEntee celebrated his first day of school.
The five-year-old spent the first four years of his life in hospital and his parents feared they would never see the day that he would walked through the doors of Clonberne National School in Galway.
He was born premature and underwent 15 surgical procedures at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin.
His mother Louise McEntee told RTE’s Morning Ireland: “He was quite isolated for all that time in hospital so getting back to Galway was the start of getting home.
“Two years on, he has got on so well, starting mainstream school is a day we never thought we’d see."
“He’s like any normal five year old, he gets up he looks for the iPad, he communicates with the iPad, he has no words, his only way of communication is through sign language and if we can’t get what he’s trying to tell us then he goes to the iPad and points it out to us.
“Like every other child he loves his trains and his television, just normal. We were told he would have severe cerebral palsy and be very brain damaged but we hope that his global developmental delay is only due to his long term admission in hospital.
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“We hope that as the years go on he will balance out to any normal child his age. He’s coming in at a developmental age of four so he’s catching up quite quickly since he came home.”
Louise also explained how hard it has been on the family.
“We were separated as a family for a long time - for four years - my two older lads, their lives are only staring now since Liam came home because all our lives were on hold when he was on hospital for that length of time," she added.
“It took nearly two and a half years to secure a home care package to get Liam actually home to his home environment and that took an awful toll on the family.
“The lads now are both working, we couldn’t afford to send them to college because we were paying for our mortgage here and we were also paying for parents’ accommodation in Crumlin hospital, so money was very tight, non existent at times, so the lads’ lives were affected as well.”
