Battle-scarred Michael learns to love life again

THERE'S no point saying Michael Heynatz will never run, jump, skip or play like other children, because this is a little boy with a lion's heart.

Four and a half years ago, The Courier-Mail reported how Michael, then aged 11 months, was lying in a crib in the Mater Children's Hospital fighting a sudden and pitched battle for his life against meningococcal disease.

On a knife's edge, he survived months of his body being, almost daily, excruciatingly stripped of dying flesh by surgeons.

He survived the amputation of both his legs and legions of painful skin grafts.

And then he's spent the intervening years recovering, under the tender and watchful care of his parents, Athol and Carmen, with yet more trips to hospital for more surgery and sessions of physio, speech and occupational therapy.

Most recently, he has mastered his tiny prosthetic legs which he calls "my big legs".

But this week heralded a major milestone because Michael started Prep at Harris Fields State School, on Brisbane's southside, where, for the first time, he's in a mainstream school, where his big sister Hannah goes, mixing it with 25 other Prep kids.

"Last year he attended two days a week at the Logan Early Childhood Development Unit," doting mum, Carmen said.

"His development was way behind because of being in hospital for so long during that crucial learning period and then when he came out we were concentrating on helping him recover physically.

"This year he started going to Logan full-time and his improvement in speech and communication has just been amazing and so this week he's started at Harris Fields."

Carmen and Athol said they wanted to tell Michael's story to help raise awareness of meningococcal.

"A lot of people don't know the long-term effects and the bad side of the disease," Carmen said.

But it was also, Athol said, to tell a good news story which was all about Michael having won out in his battle for life.