Let's start from the beginning, In June 2006 I started to suffer from bad headaches, sickness and I kept walking into things, after a while I was sent to Great Ormand Street for a brain scan, They found a small tumour but the said it was nothing to worry about and that it would not grow. I had another routine MRI November 2006 but it showed the my tumour had grown, I had to start radio therapy Jan
uary 2007, this was at University College Hospital, It was a very scary time and I did not know what to expect, I had to have it for six weeks. When I was going through my treatment, I realised that there was some where for Young children to wait, some where for older people to wait but no where for my age group to wait, I was 14 at the time. I heard from one of the play specailist that they were planning on setting up a room for the teenagers to wait and I decided that I wanted to help fundraise towards this room, I with the help from others raised £2200. I enjoyed fundraising so much that I decided that I wanted to set up my own charity, and the purpose of the charity was to send families that are affected by cancer on days out. After I had finished my radiotherapy things started to go well, for about a year and October 2008 my tumour started to grow again, this time I had to have a strong does of chemo, this treatment made me feel really unwell and I was always in hospital with infections or having transfusions. When you are on chemo your Immune system gets so low that you have to stay in a cubicle and you must not leave, this can be very boring. I had to have chemo therapy until October 2010 but it was making me too weak and I had to end by chemo Febuary 2010. When I finished my chemo, kisses4kids done some projects at our local hospital, Princess Alexandra In Harlow. The first project was a summer house for the teenagers this was equipt with a telly, x box, dvds, pool table, football table, big comfy bean bugs and this was so they could escape from the hospital atmosphere. There is one rule for this summer house and that is NO DOCTORS, NURSES OR PARENTS ALLOWED This was officially opened by Kim Wilde. We also set up a safe play garden area, so that if it was a nice day the children could go out in the fresh air and get away from the same four walls. This was opened by a very brave and specail young lady called Maisie. We have also refurbished Lister,Stevenage childrens ward play area. We have also had a sensory room put into the play room. The most recent project was making bracelets and with the money that we made we brought DVD Players and Ipads for the hospital. We have a caravan in Norfolk that we send families away, so that they can have some time out and a bit of time away from white coats. Since Kisses4kid was established we have sent families on days out to lego land, Thorpe park, Chessington and Peppa pig land. Some famillies have gone on theatre trips and now we are sending families to our caravan in Nolfolk. SO the mains reasons I started kisses4kid is because I know what it is like being stuck in hospital, through out my treatment I have been sent out for days, and to me it has made a big difference just having some normality back in my life. I have meet some amazing people along the way, some that are no longer with us but with out you, my family and friends, I don't think I would have got as far as I have. We were supported by our local Sainsbury, Thorley from June 2012-June 2013
THANK YOU TO EVERY THAT HAS HELPED ME ALONG THE WAY, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
