Help Clara fight leukaemia
Donation protected
Just over one month before her second birthday, our beautiful little girl Clara has just been diagnosed with leukaemia. She is currently almost a week into her intensive induction treatment at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane. We feel absolutely terrible that she has obviously had bone pains for some weeks, when we thought she probably was just miserable due to separation anxiety, multiple teething, and starting daycare. She has a rare variant of leukaemia, that is not as well characterised, and possibly doesn't have quite as good a prognosis. It is far too early to know what will happen, but she hasn't had as good a response to the chemotherapy as we might have liked at this stage. She is my special little girl; the one who often gets weak at the knees and drops to the floor overwhelmed when she sees me... she has to make it!
Anyway, we have started this fundraising page, and I'll be honest and say I feel completely sick about it. I always said I'd never do one of these, as my wife and I tend to rely on ourselves much more then we do on others. Many people have strongly suggested we start one, and given that we do have some complex financial issues, including a large tax bill coming up, and potential legal issues with immigration, I am going to go ahead and ask for some help on behalf of Clara and our whole family.
After years of working hard and having my wife do far more than her share while she supported me studying almost full time for my paediatric specialist exams, we took the year off last year and did a whole lot of travelling, all over the world. This is something we will forever be grateful for, given the timing of Clara's diagnosis. No one should feel sorry for us, given what we were able to do, but the reality is that the coffers are low, there are mortgages and bills to pay, and I'd only just had a couple of weeks back at the hospital before having to move the family up to Brisbane for the next month or more. All my remaining sick leave is currently being used up. Any work I might have been able to do on the side to help with funds is now not possible due to having to look after both Clara and my older son Finn.
As many people have seen on the news the past couple of years, New Zealander's are able to live and work in Australia, paying taxes and contributing in multiple ways, but if anything goes wrong, there is little access to fallback measures. As such, we won't have access to the carer allowance, which is set up to help with things like transport and medicine expenses. We will need to make many trips to Brisbane over the next couple of years for chemotherapy, and the travel, time off work, and parking is very expensive. We also wouldn't get access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme if we were unlucky enough that Clara developed a requirement for that sort of help.
In order to make sure that we were protected if things went wrong, we put in an application for Australian permanent residence about 7 months ago. This is still very slowly progressing, and yesterday we began the process of engaging a lawyer to discuss how best to make sure that Clara is able to continue her application. There are huge manuals from the Department of Foreign Affairs that outline in detail the costs to Australia of all these types of illnesses. It all seems so dreadfully unfair to a sick one year old, who has no comprehension of such complexities.
I expect we will have a multitude more expenses along the way. Poor Clara will likely not be able to go back to daycare, missing out on some of the social development side of things. My incredibly hard-working wife will also not have any of the free time she desperately deserved this year by having both kids in daycare one or two days a week. My four year old boy, Finn, will be tied in to a whole lot of hospital visits and being wary of other kids with viruses etc, all when he should just be enjoying being a kid.
Perhaps what makes things harder is that we recently moved from Newcastle, our home for five years, meaning that we have moved away from our huge support network there. We have no family at all in Australia, and while we are used to doing things ourselves, I expect things will become logistically and financially a lot harder over the next two years of chemotherapy and other treatments.
Anyhow, thanks so much for reading this. Please don't anyone feel any pressure or obligations regarding the above. If anyone felt they were able to help us out at all it would be absolutely fantastic; but otherwise thanks so much for just being aware and for thinking of us all at this time.
Be brave, my little girl!
Steve (Dad)
Anyway, we have started this fundraising page, and I'll be honest and say I feel completely sick about it. I always said I'd never do one of these, as my wife and I tend to rely on ourselves much more then we do on others. Many people have strongly suggested we start one, and given that we do have some complex financial issues, including a large tax bill coming up, and potential legal issues with immigration, I am going to go ahead and ask for some help on behalf of Clara and our whole family.
After years of working hard and having my wife do far more than her share while she supported me studying almost full time for my paediatric specialist exams, we took the year off last year and did a whole lot of travelling, all over the world. This is something we will forever be grateful for, given the timing of Clara's diagnosis. No one should feel sorry for us, given what we were able to do, but the reality is that the coffers are low, there are mortgages and bills to pay, and I'd only just had a couple of weeks back at the hospital before having to move the family up to Brisbane for the next month or more. All my remaining sick leave is currently being used up. Any work I might have been able to do on the side to help with funds is now not possible due to having to look after both Clara and my older son Finn.
As many people have seen on the news the past couple of years, New Zealander's are able to live and work in Australia, paying taxes and contributing in multiple ways, but if anything goes wrong, there is little access to fallback measures. As such, we won't have access to the carer allowance, which is set up to help with things like transport and medicine expenses. We will need to make many trips to Brisbane over the next couple of years for chemotherapy, and the travel, time off work, and parking is very expensive. We also wouldn't get access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme if we were unlucky enough that Clara developed a requirement for that sort of help.
In order to make sure that we were protected if things went wrong, we put in an application for Australian permanent residence about 7 months ago. This is still very slowly progressing, and yesterday we began the process of engaging a lawyer to discuss how best to make sure that Clara is able to continue her application. There are huge manuals from the Department of Foreign Affairs that outline in detail the costs to Australia of all these types of illnesses. It all seems so dreadfully unfair to a sick one year old, who has no comprehension of such complexities.
I expect we will have a multitude more expenses along the way. Poor Clara will likely not be able to go back to daycare, missing out on some of the social development side of things. My incredibly hard-working wife will also not have any of the free time she desperately deserved this year by having both kids in daycare one or two days a week. My four year old boy, Finn, will be tied in to a whole lot of hospital visits and being wary of other kids with viruses etc, all when he should just be enjoying being a kid.
Perhaps what makes things harder is that we recently moved from Newcastle, our home for five years, meaning that we have moved away from our huge support network there. We have no family at all in Australia, and while we are used to doing things ourselves, I expect things will become logistically and financially a lot harder over the next two years of chemotherapy and other treatments.
Anyhow, thanks so much for reading this. Please don't anyone feel any pressure or obligations regarding the above. If anyone felt they were able to help us out at all it would be absolutely fantastic; but otherwise thanks so much for just being aware and for thinking of us all at this time.
Be brave, my little girl!
Steve (Dad)
Organizer
Stephen Ansley
Organizer
Burleigh Waters QLD
