After being asked 4 years ago to attend the Ward 84 party, (Children's Oncology & Haematology)and meeting a lady by the name of Stacey Valentine, we decided to raise money for the ward in Aimee Valentines memory. Aimee's story is below <3
Since then we have met other special families & children of Ward 84 and we have visited a number of times with our characters. We continue to provide as many mascots as we possibly can to the ward 84 annual bash. We hope to raise discussion and awareness of childrens cancers.
This is Aimee Alice Joyce Valentine, 8 years old from Stalybridge, Greater Manchester. Aimee was diagnosed with a Germ Cell tumour in April 2010 after experiencing symptoms of paleness, lethargy, shortness of breath and a poor appetite.
At first our GP diagnosed her with a viral infection, after which we went to A&E who then diagnosed pneumonia. She underwent an operation for a chest drain and when that didn't work a CT scan found a tumour in her chest cavity. She underwent numerous round of chemo that at first appeared to work, but then Aimee started to have seizures. A second CT scan showed that the tumour had grown in size. A biopsy was taken which found the cancer to be a mixed cell tumour (germ cell).
Aimee had more chemotherapy treatment, but heartbreakingly on 22nd July 2010 we lost her after she had another seizure. Aimee only managed to get home 2 weekends out of the whole 4 months. In that time Aimee experienced the best nursing care possible. Aimee made a really good friend while she was in hospital and I still keep in touch with her.
As a parent of a child with cancer, we definitely feel that "all in the same boat" feeling that you get early hours in the morning in the parents room, and no matter what gender or nationality or language spoken, we all feel the same "pain for our child" xxx Thank you from Stacey (Mummy) Andrew (Daddy) and Aimee's brothers Harry, Alf and Ted x
Our unicorn is named Evelyn, she is named after a special little girl and is used to spread the word on Childhood Cancer Awareness. Here is Evelyns story -
On the 12th April 2017 Evelyn was diagnosed with stage 4 high risk Neuroblastoma. A week prior to the diagnosis she had a small lump at the side of her right eye. After waiting a week to hear about a CT scan from her local hospital, her lump had grown massively and bruising had appeared on both eyelids. So her parents decided to take her straight to the Manchester children's hospital, 48 hours after being admitted she was diagnosed. She had a tumour attached to her right adrenal gland and the neuroblastoma had spread to her bone marrow, which had resulted in the growth next to her eye. Her chemotherapy started very quickly. She had 5 months of aggressive chemotherapy, surgery to remove the primary tumour, a stem cell transplant, 3 weeks of radiotherapy and 6 months of immunotherapy; with a lot of illnesses, infections and minor surgeries in between. Evelyn has now completed the 16 months of treatment and there is no evidence of any disease, which means she is now in remission. Evelyn is currently doing extremely well, apart from eating issues so she is still needing to be tube fed.