Pool for Elijah

My beautiful first born son Elijah, was diagnosed with a brain tumor at 9 months. Elijah spent three months of his young life at Starship Hospital often in the high dependency unit where he underwent three major tumor debulking operations and multiple shunt operations due to complications in the brain caused by the tumor damage and operations.

Unfortunately, the surgeon was only able to remove 95% of the tumor leaving the remaining 5% behind due to its life threatening location. When his tumor started growing again, a few months after leaving hospital, Elijah was put on a 18 month chemotherapy schedule. That only lasted 12 months due to Elijah having an allergic reaction to the chemo and it was at that time we decided we couldn't continue with alternative chemo options as the toll it was taking on Elijah and the whole family was overwhelming. Needless to say that the chemo worked and finally stunted the growth of the tumor with a 50% chance of growing back at any stage.

As a result of all this, Elijah has a long list of medical conditions that effect his everyday life, including global developmental delay, left sided hemiparesis (left sided weakness, can't use his left hand,) multiple hormone deficiencies, hypothalamus obesity, mild sleep apnea and diabetes insipidus (unable to retain his own fluids) to name just a few. The Oncologist originally told us that he would be lucky to make it to the age of 5 so we make a point of celebrating every birthday because it could be his last!

Well, he turns 10 next month and has come a long way from those early days when we were sent home with our one year old who could barely sit up. In his short life he has overcome all the odds and is a joy to everyone he comes in contact with. He has many challenges in his life but he continues to impress with his eagerness to be as independent as possible. One of Elijah's favorite things in the world is being in the water (likely due to his hypothalamic obesity.) He has always loved being in pools and paddling pools, spending hours on end happy the entire time so a year ago we enrolled him in swimming lessons which has quickly become his favorite part of the week.

Also about a year ago Elijah had the opportunity to talk with the volunteers from Make A Wish Foundation and he wished for his own swimming pool. Unfortunately it is a policy that they don't do pools for health and safety reasons so instead Elijah used his wish to ask for an outside play area which is due to be delivered for his 10th birthday! We hope that you may join with us to build a very special pool for a very special boy. Thank you for taking the time to read our story and many thanks in advance for any amount donated!