A MUCH-LOVED father and husband is spending Christmas in intensive care with serious brain damage after suffering a heart attack at home.

Daniel Mason is paralysed, blind and has serious cognitive problems after collapsing at home while he looked after his young children.

The graphic designer's wife, Sabrina, is hoping to give him the best chance of recovery possible and friends have set up a fundraising campaign to help the family pay for medical and other expenses.

Sabrina said: “The paramedics managed to give him another chance to live, which he has taken, but unfortunately it is not as simple as that.

“This road of recovery is very slow and long. We were told that once he is out of intensive care he will need at least one year of intensive rehabilitation, if not two.”

Dan, 42, has been in intensive care at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, since the incident at the family home in The Drive, Hove, when he was without oxygen for about twenty minutes.

After the incident in September he regularly suffers from infections, high temperatures and severe pain.

But he has managed to recover some cognitive ability, and on a good day can hold a simple conversation, albeit with huge effort. On a bad day he is beset by seizures and appears to understand little.

Sabrina, 28, said: “Sometimes it is one step forward and then several steps back, and that is what makes it incredibly difficult.

“You start the grieving process and then you have some good times and you feel so happy.

“Then you wolf down some food because you realise you have not eaten for ages and then things get completely crazy again.

“But there is a lot of him still in there and I think he is just locked in at the moment and does not know how to break out of there.”

The mother-of-two is now juggling paying for their mortgage, taking care of their children, Chloe, two, and Amelie, seven months, and preparing for Dan's lengthy rehabilitation.

Doctors hope he can be sent for rehabilitation soon but it is uncertain how long NHS funding will last for, and that will not be in Brighton.

Sabrina said: “We need money for different types of rehabilitation therapies, hyperbaric oxygen treatment, money for transportation, alterations for coming home, assistive computer technology. It all costs thousands of pounds.”

“For his own progress it is important that he has all the motivation that he can get from his family.

“I always think marriage is for life so I would like to be able to bring him home.”

Generous well-wishers have donated more than £12,000 to the family via gogetfunding.com.

To donate, visit www.gogetfunding.com/the-masons-family-fundraiser/