Little Clodagh's Leukaemia fight
Imagine waking up one morning thinking it was just going to be another ordinary day.
Except for the fact that you’re three weeks away from giving birth to your second child, and your 17-month-old child has an eye infection that isn’t clearing up with antibiotics, everything else seemed like usual.
But today July 20th, 2017 isn’t an ordinary day. It's the one year anniversary of your move from Australia to Ireland but that fact fades into insignificance in a few short hours.
Today, your sick child’s mood seems to change and all they want to do is endlessly sleep. They’re no longer eating and playing and the eye infection seems to have taken its toll.
You call around to the pharmacist and GP, thinking they’ll prescribe some stronger antibiotics, you’ll go home and ride out a few more days of nursing a sick child until they are back to normal health.
But the GP is not happy and instead of heading home, sends Clodagh straight to the local hospital. This is where they runs some extra blood tests and the results come back erratic and inexplicable, and instead of heading home, you are rushed to the Our Lady's National Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin with your heart sunken.
You start to realise nothing is going to return to normality any time soon, as a nurse escorts you to a special room where the doctors , three nurses and a counsellor gather around you to share news that you never want to hear.
Your child doesn’t just have an eye infection… they have leukaemia (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia).
It’s a parents’ worst nightmare that could hit any of us at any moment in time.
And it happened to 17-month-old girl, Clodagh.
Within 18 hours of her diagnosis, Clodagh had her first operation and chemotherapy treatment, and has had many more chemotherapy sessions since then, with weekly lumber puncture operations and more chemo sessions to come.
In the next two weeks, Clodagh will lose her hair, become incredibly weak and the chemotherapy will destroy her ability to fight infection.
Clodagh and her family will spend the next two years of their lives in and out of hospitals working on a treatment plan. In the first 35 days, the treatment she receives will kill the leukaemia cells and the six months following will be spent making sure they don’t return. After that, Clodagh faces the long road of re-building her immune system.
As Clodagh currently has no immune system to fight anything, the minute she gets ill her parents must rush her to the hospital.
With another baby due any day, Clodagh’s mother Eimear will not be working and home caring for Clodagh and the new baby, and her father Cameron has had to give up work to help. With no wage, unknown and unforseen medical expenses and the need for an additional car to ensure they can rush Clodagh to hospital whenever needed, the family face a very long road ahead and they need our help.
Myself and the rest of Eimear's mothers group here in Australia, have put together a Go Fund Me Project to help the parents’ purchase a second car and put money toward any future medical costs to help alleviate any financial duress in this already stressful time.
This fund me account is totally controlled by Cameron and Eimear to help little Clodagh with all the medical expences she will need to help her fight ALL. The family will unfortunately have no income for the immediate furure with Cameron being Clodagh's full time carerand Eimear looking after the new addition, so every little bit will help.
We would like to thank you in advance for your love, thoughts and generosity!
Every little bit helps in giving little Clodagh the best chance at the full and happy life she deserves.
For information about this type of Cancer please click on link
http://www.rch.org.au/ccc/diagnoses/Acute_lymphoblastic_leukaemia_ALL/
