A Mansfield family has nominated a surgeon for a people’s award after his quick thinking saved their son’s life.

Jackson Lee was close to death with sepsis when Shailinder Singh operated on a hospital ward, realising there was no time to take the seven-year-old into an operating theatre.

His parents, Matt and Bec, said the surgeon’s actions saved Lee’s life.

Now they have nominated the medic for a Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust People First Recognition Award.

“Mr Singh is the best,” said Matt. “The things that were put in place to save Jackson’s life were incredible and I will forever be in Mr Singh’s debt. It’s a miracle as far as I am concerned.”

Jackson, now 11 and a student at All Saints’ Catholic Academy, Mansfield, was blue-lighted to Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC), Nottingham, after collapsing on the floor at King’s Mill Hospital A&E, Sutton, where it was first thought he had appendicitis or gastroenteritis.

Matt said: “They said if Jackson wasn’t put into a medically-induced coma in the next couple of minutes, there was a good chance he would die’.

“You can imagine how horrific it was to hear that as a parent. They whisked Jackson away and it took so long to stabilise him that Bec and I were convinced he had died.”

Jackson was then rushed to the QMC.

“We were told not to follow the ambulance because they might need to stop and work on him on the way,” said Matt.

At the QMC, mum Bec asked if she could see Jackson and was told no. “The nurse said he had minutes to live and if she didn’t take him then he wouldn’t survive. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” she said.

Jackson was taken to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where Matt and Bec met Shailinder.

“He was already gowned up and said, ‘don’t worry, God is with me, and I will save him’,” recalled Matt.

“The doors burst open and Jackson was wheeled in — they didn’t even have time to take him to theatre. Mr Singh did the operation right there, on the ward.”

Jackson had a hernia and a perforated bowel. Ten centimetres of his large intestine had pushed through the hernia, and had twisted and died, causing sepsis.

The surgeon cut out the rotting flesh and several litres of septic fluid were drained away.

Shailinder said: “I knew that if we took him to the operating theatre, he would not make it.

“When I was training in India, people would arrive so sick there would not be the space or the time to take them to one.

“Without that experience, it’s hard to know what to do. I just hope we can learn from what happened and help others.

“Doing the operation this way enabled me to save a very sick child by operating on him on the trolley in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, rather than taking them to theatre and giving him general anaesthetic and possibly losing them.”

Bec added: “If Mr Singh hadn’t been on call that night, when Jackson took ill, there’d be no Jackson.

“I know not everyone would have done what he did — with all his experience, what he’s done in his career. Because of that that we still have Jackson today.”