So many of you have asked how you can help. Now I have found a way you can…
Today, 34 Australians will get the news they have blood cancer. On September 10, 2014 my then 2 year old daughter Rosalie was one of them. That day, our world was turned upside down and we will never be the same again.
Since the day of diagnosis, we have watched Rosalie suffer and become incredibly sick. We have seen her struggle to swallow hundreds of medicines and have hundreds more pumped through her central line directly toward her heart. We stood by her side as she became puffy and intensely angry from high dose steroids. We held her as she her lost 20% of her body weight and became so weak she could barely move due to high dose chemotherapy. We spent countless hours and days at her hospital bedside wishing the machines would stop beeping and alarming so we could breathe knowing she is stable. We have taken her home from hospital and hoped we would have a reason to take her back again – so that we didn’t have to be responsible should another drop in heart rate or blood oxygen happen on our watch and we miss it. We have lain with her on countless occasions watching closely to see if her chest is still moving. We have cried as she went under general anaesthetic many times to get a dose of chemotherapy into her brain and prayed she would wake up again. We have been terrified she may not pull through after her organs shut down in septic shock with a bacterial infection on board putting her on life support.
There are many more things I could tell you about our journey thus far but we are optimistically heading into recovery mode now – Rosalie is currently leukaemia free and has a great prognosis for a long and healthy life – so we are feeling incredibly lucky. She is the strongest person I know. I will be running the New York marathon in November 2016 to mark the end of our two year treatment. I am doing this so I can help others have a smoother journey by raising funds for the Leukaemia Foundation. $70,000 is my goal – this can support an honours year haemotology student who may develop a new cure for blood cancers. Please give generously if you can.