On Friday, Ballard passed away surrounded by family and friends.
“The room was so full of love,” his mother Katie told Lisa Wilkinson, who originally spoke to them in April on The Project.
One of his friends there in the room told her, “He had his voice and he said ‘I love you' several times to Katie.”
Eight years ago, in 2010, Ballard and his friends were hanging out in the backyard of his family’s Sydney home when they saw the slug going by. As a joke, the teens dared Ballard to eat it.
“We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown-ups and a slug came crawling across here,” one of Ballard’s best friends, Jimmy Galvin, told The Project in April. “The conversation came up, you know. ‘Should I eat it?’ And off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened.”
A few days later, Ballard started complaining of leg pains.
“He said, ‘I ate a slug; it could’ve been that,’ ” his mum said. “And I said, ‘No one gets sick from that.’ He was scared, so you know, as a mum, all you want to do is reassure them.”
He to contract rat lungworm, or angiostrongyliasis — a parasite carried by rats that affects the brain and spinal cord. It left him in a coma for 420 days, and when he woke up he was paralysed, and unable to eat or go to the bathroom on his own. He also needed a tracheotomy.
For years, his mother was his carer.
The mum admitted she doesn't blame her son or his friends for the prank.
“As far as I’m concerned he didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “It’s just a silly thing. Just because you were being mates and doing things together — it’s not your fault.”
