A family warned of the dangers of meningitis yesterday after their one-year-old son was struck down with the disease – and needed all his limbs amputated.

Brave Marshall Janson was playing with his presents on Boxing Day morning when his mother Stephanie, 32, noticed he had a temperature and a strange bruise on his forehead.

She and husband Moss, 31, rushed the tot from their home in Truro to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, where his condition deteriorated rapidly.

The tot was covered in a rash caused by septicaemia, and doctors called for a specialist ambulance to transfer him to the Bristol Children's Hospital.

He battled through in intensive care for four weeks until surgeons told the family his only chance of survival was to have both arms and legs removed.

Marshall underwent the six-hour operation on January 27 to have both legs amputated from the knee and his arms from below the elbow.

The brave toddler is now receiving further treatment and skin grafts at Bristol's Frenchay Hospital, with his mother and father at his bedside.

Speaking yesterday, Stephanie said: "We are still struggling to come to terms with what has happened.

"We were having a beautiful Christmas, then suddenly it turned into a living nightmare. When I put him to bed he was happy and healthy. I checked him at 4am and he had a slight temperature, but nothing to worry about.

"But by Boxing Day he was hotter and had a strange bruise or mark on his forehead – at first I thought it was chocolate.

"I just knew he wasn't right – some kind of mother's instinct – so we took him into hospital immediately.

"Everything happened so quickly, within two hours he was covered in a rash and fading fast."

After Marshall was transferred to Bristol Children's Hospital, he suffered complete organ failure and spent four weeks in intensive care.

When he emerged from the struggle, his body had shut off the circulation to his arms and legs, which were by then dead and blackened.

Stephanie said: "In order to help him survive and recover, they had to remove them. It is a horrible thing but we are just lucky that he's alive.

"I can't believe how well he is doing. He is already adapting to not having any arms, he reaches for things and moves them with what he has. He is such a happy little boy.

"But we are lucky because we reacted so quickly – other parents need to be aware of the signs and take action immediately."

Marshall's grandmother Sandra Harris, 53, said it had been an "agonising" time for the whole family.

She said: "We are all devastated. Marshall is the most bright and bubbly little boy you can imagine."

Marshall had celebrated his first birthday on December 22 last year – just four days before being struck down by the deadly illness.

Stephanie and Moss, a car sprayer, have been staying in Bristol to be with Marshall for the past two months.

■ A 12-year-old schoolboy has died after contracting suspected bacterial menin- gitis, it was confirmed yesterday.

The pupil at Ryeish Green School in Reading, Berkshire, was taken ill on Monday and died after falling into a critical condition early on Tuesday.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has written to the families of all 300 pupils at the secondary school which has remained open. The boy's family members and others that may have had close contact have been given antibiotics as a precaution.