A LITTLE girl who touched the hearts of Kinglake residents has lost her long battle with a congenital heart defect.
Flyers urging people to help Phoebe Rolando and her family were still posted in stores in the township as the sad news filtered through the mountain community.
The three-year-old had spent months in hospital and passed away peacefully at the Royal Children’s Hospital with parents Julia and Anthony at her side on September 12.
A funeral was held yesterday at the Heritage Funeral Home in Lilydale.
Her mother said on Facebook: “It will be a celebration of the life of a beautiful little girl I was honoured to call my daughter.”
Phoebe, nicknamed Cheeky, was born less than a fortnight after Black Saturday when Anthony and Julia, who was then eight-and-a-half-months pregnant, raced down the mountain to escape the flames. Within hours, doctors diagnosed Phoebe with a congenital heart defect. She underwent the first of numerous operations when she was five days old.
Her parents were told that the babies in intensive care were naked because the “spaghetti wire” of tubes and intravenous lines meant they couldn’t wear conventional clothes.
When Phoebe was about a year old, the Rolandos invented a “healing suit” with openings for cords and tubes, and plastic studs safe for use in X-rays and other scans so babies around the world could be warm and secure while in intensive care.
But Phoebe’s battle continued. This year her Kinglake playgroup started fund-raising because, according to flyers, her parents were unable to work while they were caring for her.
Friends said Phoebe had sung and danced her way into their hearts, while strangers were moved by her death. One said “my heart broke a thousand times”.
– Sue Hewitt
