Building Love with the Sydney Telethon
- Lilly
- May 6, 2015
- 2 min read
We live on a property in rural New South Wales, Australia. We have to drive 45 mins, to the main hospital 50kms away. On May 9 2014, our eldest daughter was diagnosed with cancer. Retinoblastoma to be precise. I'll discuss this more another time. But what I will discuss now is the need we had to travel to Sydney, a 6 hour drive away, for our DD who was 18 months old at the time; to have her diagnosis confirmed, and when it was; for her treatment to begin. It meant staying in Sydney.
Ronald McDonald House Westmead opened their doors to us, gave us a home away from home and a network of support. From the volunteers and staff that work at the house, to the other families that are travelling their own journeys with their own sick children. In the last 12 months, we have continually been one of the lucky families who have been able to take one of the 18 rooms that are in the current house, every time we needed to stay in Sydney for treatments or check-ups.
While we may have been lucky, there have been 400 families turned away last year, having to find alternative and sometimes very costly accomodation elsewhere to stay near the hospital with their sick children.
Building Love is RMH Westmeads campaign to raise enough funds to be able to build a new house next to the hospital that will consist of 60 rooms, with the flexibility to add a further 40 rooms at a later date if funding becomes available. This new house will mean that those 400 families turned away last year, wont be turned away in future. That instead of the current count of 500 families helped a year, 1360 will be helped.
Channel 7 have teamed up with RMH Westmead to hold the Sydney Telethon on May 16th, to help raise the final funds required to build the new house.
Please show your support for not just my family and I, but all families that have sick children and have to travel to Westmead. Help RMH Westmead keep our families together in their greatest time of need.
Comentários