Support Families Who Have a Terminally Ill Child

When she was 11 years old, Corrie, the elder of Kirsty’s two daughters, was diagnosed with a rare cancer. The closest hospital for her specialist care was 60 miles away. The family had moved to Cumbria just a few years before and had no family close by. They spent that year juggling family life with gruelling chemotherapy on their own, with little help.

Sadly the cancer returned when Corrie was 13. Life was full of chemotherapy, tests and taking bloods. Kirsty was up all night and getting very little sleep – she was exhausted. There was no-one to help, no friends, no relatives, and the hospitals didn’t want them. Kirsty realised she couldn’t cope. She and her husband Edward were exhausted, and she realised they needed help. After a desperate call to their social worker, two Family Support Workers from Rainbow Trust knocked on their door. “At first, I wasn’t happy at all to accept the help of Rainbow Trust. My children and my husband and all my family expected me to be strong.”

When they explained that they provided emotional and practical support for the whole family, the tears poured down Kirsty’s face with relief. The very next day, a a Family Support Worker arrived carrying a huge box with games, activities, books, colouring utensils and the children smiled for the first time in weeks. Kirsty had the first full three hours sleep in two months. As Kirsty remembers, “this was the beginning of a very important part of our lives.”

Rainbow Trust helped by taking Corrie and her sister to the park, or the cinema, or bowling. Kirsty says. “You become over-protective so you don’t dare do anything that might risk your child, obviously.”

“When Corrie had six weeks of radiotherapy, five days a week, our Family Support Workers did one of the 120-mile round trips every week. Otherwise I would have to go on my own and not be with my other daughter, or Edward would have to take the day off work.”

After Corrie had recovered and successfully passed her A-levels, she secured a place at university to study nursing, and decided to take a gap year to travel. Tragically she was drugged, abducted, assaulted and left for dead on the island of Ko Samui in Thailand, and she returned home shattered. Kirsty says, “To our amazement Rainbow Trust heard about this trauma and once again came to our rescue.

“Sadly, within a year, a new cancer along with the old one, reared its ugly head. Rainbow Trust were with us throughout. By this time our family and friends were almost too shocked to know what to say. We felt isolated and alone. I was so touched that Rainbow Trust stayed with us, as Corrie was 20 years old now. But her brother and sister were still in need of support, as were my husband and I.”

Corrie left university when the cancer was diagnosed as terminal. She declined further treatment and married her boyfriend just five weeks before she died. Kirsty says, “Rainbow Trust stayed close by us until we felt we could go on without their support. They helped me to plan and think about Corrie’s death. Without them, the whole process of grief would have been much worse and our family would have been less cared for. We would have more regrets. I certainly have fewer regrets.”

Thank you for supporting families like Corrie's through such tragic times. Your donations give more families access to vital emotional support for as long as it is needed. 

Leanne, a Family Support Worker from Rainbow Trust’s North East team supports Darren and his family:

“Grace was 18 months old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She’d been fine up until then. She was one of those children who went straight from crawling to running so when she started falling over, we thought she was just clumsy. She became less mobile and then she started having tantrums so we took her to a paediatrician but he couldn’t find anything wrong. It wasn’t until she was sick at nursery that she was rushed to A&E where they did a brain scan and we were told that Grace had a brain tumour. I was devastated.

“It all happened so quickly – she was diagnosed on the Tuesday and on Wednesday had brain surgery to remove the tumour. Watching her go through the treatment was really hard, the worst possible thing is you know it’s this terrible poison going into her body and it drained her. She was so tired.

“She needed ongoing treatment, and it wasn’t till further down the line that we started to struggle. I would stay at the hospital from 9am to 7pm then go home. My wife Fiona would then stay overnight so Grace wouldn’t be alone. Every morning we were exhausted.

“The hospital had a Rainbow Trust drop in group where we heard about how they supported families in our situation. Leanne now takes Grace out for a couple of hours to the park or soft play when she isn’t receiving treatment. It gives her some fun time and it gives Fiona and I a break to do housework, go shopping or even just sleep. It’s such a help, I honestly don’t know where we’d be without Leanne.

“I would definitely recommend Rainbow Trust and I have already. I’ve told people how fantastic and brilliant our Family Support Worker, Leanne is. We’d be lost without her. Talking to her is such a helpful release for us, she listens and the best thing is, she cares. She treats Grace like her own. I told someone on the ward the other day that the positive out of Grace’s cancer is Leanne and Rainbow Trust.”

Last year Rainbow Trust supported over 2,000 families like Darren’s, but there are still thousands of families that we could help with extra funding. Thank you for helping us to reach those new families.