Five-year-old Tony Hudgell has raised more than £1 million for the London hospital that saved his life by walking 10 kilometres on his new prosthetic legs after being inspired by Captain Tom’s record-breaking endeavours.
Hudgell had both legs amputated after suffering near-fatal abuse from his birth parents when he was a baby that had left him fighting for survival.
He received his new legs in February, his adoptive mother Paula Hudgell said, and from being able to barely take a step at the start of June he could now power through hundreds of metres every day. The challenge had been “really fun”, Tony said, and although it was hard to begin with, it had got better as it had progressed.
He said he felt “really good” to have achieved his goal of walking 10 kilometres in June with days to spare.
Thank you @antanddec this absolutely made Tony Bears day 💙 #antanddec @EvelinaLondon#doubleamputee#GoTonyGo#seetheability#millionaireboy #millionpoundboy #10kwalk #inspiredbycaptaintom#Hero pic.twitter.com/13vhTfGppP
— Tony Hudgell BCyA BEAR @bearsjourney (@paula_hudgell) June 27, 2020
Paula Hudgell said Tony was fighting for his life when she first met him in Evelina London Children’s Hospital. “I just broke down, he was four months old by that time, he’d had all his limbs broken, he’d had blood trauma to the face, sepsis, multi-organ failure, and they never expected him to survive,” she said at the family’s home in Kings Hill, Kent.
“We took him home (…) he was broken, shutdown, a tiny tiny underweight little boy.”
Hudgell and her husband adopted Tony in 2016, by which time he was a much-loved member of their family. “We didn’t want him to go anywhere else, he was our little boy by then,” she said.
Consultant surgeon Michail Kokkinakis said Tony had coped with multiple operations, including major leg surgery in 2017.
Tony, who says he wants to be a policeman when he grows up, decided to take on his challenge after seeing British veteran Captain Tom Moore, who is 95 years his senior, walking 100 laps of his garden using a walking frame, a feat that raised more than £33 million for charity.
He initially set out to raise £500 pounds for the Evelina hospital, but the total had now surpassed £1 million.
