LITTLE "Mackie" Cooper has woken from a nine-day induced coma after a desperate battle against deadly meningococcal disease.

And while the three-and-a-half-year-old Atherton boy is not smiling yet, his relieved parents say there seems to be no sign that the ordeal has left him with any brain damage or hearing loss as feared.

"Nine days and he's awake – it's a bit of a lift," his tired and emotional dad, Jeremy Cooper, told The Cairns Post.

"He's not real happy," Mr Cooper said.

"He's having trouble with all the tubes but he's watching a bit of TV, answering some questions, drifting in and out.

"Obviously, he's in pain and he's very frustrated with his hands.

"But he looks at us and is reassured that we're there with him."

Doctors feared the worst when Mackenzie, called Mackie by his family, became critically ill within hours of showing the first high fever and dark bruise-like rash symptoms of meningococcal on Monday last week.

The next few days and nights in Cairns Base Hospital's intensive care unit were touch and go as the toddler's kidneys shut down, but he was finally considered stable enough to transfer to Brisbane’s Mater Private Hospital last Thursday.

Mr Cooper said Mackie's kidneys were still not working properly so he was still on dialysis, as well as a ventilator to help him breathe.

But doctors each day were slowly reducing the strong drugs he has been on as his body becomes well enough to cope without them.

He is expected to lose the tips of all his fingers except his thumbs as his legacy of the blood poisoning disease but Mr Cooper is confident Mackenzie will adapt.

"Getting to keep his thumbs will make a big difference," he said.

"And he hasn't learnt to write yet, which is a good thing because he won't have to relearn how to do it."

A morale boost for Mr Cooper was the arrival of his father, Bob Cooper, from Sydney on Wednesday just hours before Mackenzie opened his eyes for the first time.

"It looked like he was just waiting for his Poppy," Mr Cooper said.

He said he and his wife, Diana, said they owed their son's life to the skilled doctors who had worked with him in Cairns and Brisbane, as well as the boy's own strength to keep fighting.

"It would have been much easier for him to give up and he didn't and he won't," Mr Cooper said.

"We're going to take pictures of him while he’s in here so we can explain to him what happened and how we nearly lost him.

"But we'll tell him there's nothing he can't overcome now, he's proven that."

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