A COMMUNITY is rallying around a little boy who has been battling leukaemia.

Little Alfie Taylor was diagnosed with the life-threatening illness last April and has been enduring gruelling treatment.

Now family and friends and hoping to raise money to send the five-year-old fighter to Disney World in Florida when he is given the all-clear.

His parents, Alex and Emma Taylor, realised something was wrong, just after he turned four, in January last year.

Ms Taylor, who lives in Stanley, County Durham, said: “He did not look right. He was white and kept having stomach pains. I took him to hospital and they took his appendix out, but they saw it had not burst so they realised it was not that.

“I kept taking him back and I went to A&E and said I am not leaving until you take his blood, so they did and tested it and found he had leukaemia. It was horrific. I remember the doctor coming in and I knew it was bad. The first thing I thought was: ‘Is he going to die?’”

Alfie has had 11 months months of intensive intravenous chemotherapy treatment in five stages. He has had tablets and injections at home, spent 45 nights in hospital, and is now “in maintenance” until September 2019.

Alfie still needs treatment every night and steroids once a month.

Ms Taylor, a registration officer with the Land Registry in Durham, said: “When he first came out of hospital he was in a wheelchair. He could not walk. The chemo was just attacking everything.

“The first few months were the worst. He has lost his hair twice. It has been horrendous. It is the worst thing to imagine as a parent. Nobody could ever prepare you for it.”

Alfie, a pupil at Greenland Community Primary School, still goes to reception class when he is well enough and is obsessed by his heroes, the Ninja Turtles.

Ms Taylor said: “At first he was not too good and we had problems giving him his medicines, but he copes with it quite well now. Nothing seems to phase him. He is a warrior.”

Several fundraising events are now being held for Alfie in and around Stanley. A community family funday is being held at Craghead Village Hall on Saturday, June 3 from 10am-4pm.

An online fundraising page set up by family friend Lauren McGeorge has already raised more than £1,100.

Ms Taylor said: “I would like to say thank you to everyone who is supporting us. I have never even met some of them and they are doing so much for us. I can’t believe it.”

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