Our nine year old boy Stanley, is our hero. Diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) in November 2016.  His strength and bravery amazes us all everyday, and he deals with whatever has been thrown at him with courage and faith in the treatment he is receiving.

To date he has had too many procedures and problems to
list but they include numerous blood transfusions, fitting of a semi-permanent access point to a main vein in his chest, taking a core of bone from his femur, several lumber punches with chemo injected into his spine, bone marrow samples taken from his hip, injections into his thigh muscle, steroid drugs which lead to him becoming diabetic for a period of time, as well as the huge number of IV and oral chemo drugs. As you would imagine all of this treatment makes Stanley very weak, frail, tired, unsteady on his legs, with no appetite and he vomits
practically every day. 

Before ALL Stanley played football for Middleton Cheney, Rugby for Banbury and did any other sport whenever the opportunity arose making the impact of ALL even more punishing with him being incapable of doing the activities he loves. But Stanley’s ‘true grit’ is amazing and somehow allows him to deal with this awful situation in a way that I never could.

After a worrying lack of response to his initial chemotherapy treatment the Consultants discovered that Stanley had a rare chromosome mutation that is obstructive to the treatment. An additional drug was prescribed to Stanley to deal with the mutation and now, ‘touch wood’ Stanley is responding as he should.

Stanley is now 5 months into an overall chemotherapy programme and if everything goes to plan he has a further 3 years and 5 months of treatment before he can get the final ‘all clear’. This sounds horrendous, and it is, but we are also all incredibly grateful that eventually and  hopefully, Stanley should be able to live a normal life again. Whereas some children we have met on Kamran’s Ward at the JR sadly won’t.

Although our time constantly in and out of hospital is hard, the children's
wards and staff in Oxford and Banbury have been great and have helped make this very difficult time bearable. It is not until we have had to experience these wards and numerous staff first hand, that we can fully appreciate and value their expertise and care, it is second to none.

Family and friends have all asked how they can help or support us, and
we felt that giving back to the Children's Hospitals Oxford would help future research and treatment for children like Stanley.

So this May the ladies involved above, have kindly agreed to put themselves through the Rough Runner, and might I add that some of them had never ran before, so doing the 10k over obstacles is a challenge for us all. 

This 10 Anniversary Appeal will help create more space for parents to stay close to their children, as well as fund more play areas and specialist medical equipment.

With your help they aim to make real difference for young patients and their families when they need it most.

All the funds raised will benefit the Oxford Children’s Hospital and children’s care across our Trust including the Horton General Hospital in Banbury and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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