Liam Watson became paralyzed from the waist-down after developing a one-in-a-million medical condition

NEED TO KNOW

• Liam Watson, a 29-year-old U.K. man, was left permanently paralyzed from the chest down after developing an extremely rare spinal blood clot
• Just one week later, he learned that he and his wife were expecting their first child
• While the couple admits there has been “a lot of grief” after Liam’s injury, they are currently attempting to adapt their home to allow him to be the best dad he can be

A U.K. man found out he was going to be a father just one week after a rare medical condition left him permanently paralyzed from the chest down.

Liam Watson, a construction worker from Warwickshire, England, said he began noticing back pain after using a car jack in February, per the BBC.

Watson, 29, said the pain got worse over the following week, and he then began feeling tingling in his legs while at a job site.

“I went back to the site office. I almost fell, but they caught me and sat me down on a bench, called an ambulance,” he recalled while speaking to the outlet.

“The ambulance took like an hour to get there and in that time, you know, the numbness had spread from my legs upwards and I was having a lot of trouble breathing,” he added.

Doctors diagnosed the man with a spontaneous epidural hematoma, which is a blood clot that forms in the head or spine without any preceding trauma.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the average person has about a one in 1,000,000 chance of developing the rare condition.

Watson underwent emergency surgery to stop his condition from worsening, but by that point significant permanent damage had already been done.

Doctors told him he was permanently paralyzed from the chest down.

One week later, his wife, Poppy Watson, shared more life-changing news: she was pregnant with their first child.

“It’s almost like this is like a little miracle. And it is realistically … it was the last possible chance we could have done this with such ease,” Poppy told the BBC.

She added that the pregnancy came after she experienced a previous miscarriage.

While the couple is looking forward to becoming first-time parents, they also acknowledged that they never imagined they would be doing so under such challenging circumstances.

“There was a lot of grief, to be honest,” Poppy, who works as a teacher, said.

“There’s like a definite line between before the injury and after the injury. Obviously it’s been made a lot more scary because we found out we were pregnant quite soon afterwards,” she continued.

Poppy has since set up a GoFundMe to help them adapt their home so that Liam can more easily parent with his new physical limitations.

“The pregnancy is going well, however, navigating life after Liam’s recent discharge has been much harder than expected,” she wrote on the fundraising page.

She added that it will not be possible “to fund a lot of the equipment he will need to be independent as a father” on her single salary.

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Poppy said that they also hope to one day buy a power attachment for Liam’s wheelchair so that he will be able to do things like “join in on walks with the family, and go places more independently.”

“Liam is the kindest, best man I could ever have imagined having the pleasure of marrying. He is going to make the most fantastic father to our little boy which is why I am fundraising,” she added.

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