Max Westwood
When then two-year-old Willow developed a limp, mum Kirsty Lawton was worried.
“I was like ‘my two-year-old should not be limping, you know?’ It just didn’t seem right,“ Kirsty said.
“So we presented to the hospital, did some blood tests, and then I think within two or three days, I found out that it was cancer.”
Willow was diagnosed with stage four high-risk neuroblastoma, a type of cancer that starts in early nerve cells called neuroblasts.
The Bundoora mum still struggles reliving the moment her daughter was diagnosed.
“I thought to myself ’how does that happen?’ She’s two, almost three years old and she’s got this disease that’s riddled her whole body. It was all in her bones and her lymph nodes. I was in utter shock,” Kirsty said.
“Just to think about it now, it’s just horror. It was like an out of body experience and we had no idea the journey we’re about to go on and the intensity of the treatments.“
The journey involved 489 nights in hospital and numerous rounds of chemotherapy.
“It was just Willow and I for days and weeks on end. Even when we were able to go home, often it was a matter of hours and we were back in hospital because of a fever or a Hickman (central) line complication. It was just relentless,” Kirsty said.
Willow needed a nine-hour surgery to remove one of her adrenal glands where the tumour was located.
Now Willow, 5, is attending kindergarten two days a week, and with hospital still a part of her life, her family are thankful to supporters of the Starlight Children’s Foundation, which always managed to put a smile on Willow’s face despite everything she was going through.
Starlight is a program that partners with health professionals to help bring the fun and joy back that helps sick kids be kids.
“They just give her a smile and someone to play with other than someone medical that’s going to poke at her,” she said.
“Just immediately when she saw the captain, it’s like she wasn’t sick anymore … They just come in and they’re funny and they make her laugh and they bring craft activities and she just loves it.“
Starlight is running a tour de kids program, which is a 30-day virtual cycling challenge, which aims to raise $750,000 to deliver happiness to over 19,000 seriously ill children through vital hospital programs throughout the month of September.
Details: tourdekids.org.au
